With his feature directorial debut Sin Nombre, which he also wrote, Cary Joji Fukunaga won the Dramatic Directing Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Shortly thereafter, he made his first major mark in commercials, directing Levi’s “America,” part of Wieden+Kennedy’s pioneering “Go Forth” campaign, which garnered several AICP Show honors as well as a 2010 Cannes Bronze Lion in Film Craft.
In television, Fukunaga directed HBO’s True Detective—not a single episode gig but rather the entire first season, all eight episodes starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Such a solo helming act was virtually unprecedented for a TV drama series. Fukunaga won the Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Emmy Award last year for the “Who Goes There” episode of True Detective.
Indeed a penchant for breaking in with a bang and breaking new creative ground has marked Fukunaga’s career path, which now continues with Beasts of No Nation, the story of a boy drafted into a West African rebel army. Based on Uzodinma Iweala’s novel of the same title and a screenplay adaptation by Fukunaga, the film follows the lad, Agu (portrayed by newcomer Abraham Attah), who enjoys a peaceful, playful, loving family life in a village until it comes under attack, forcing him to flee and to eventually become an orphaned child soldier, part of a platoon led by a militant commandant (a powerful performance by Idris Elba).
The film depicts the brutal plight of child soldiers and the depths of misery in war while somehow doing so in an artful, almost poetic manner (Fukunaga also served as cinematographer). It’s a special film already generating Oscar buzz—as well as business buzz in that Beasts of No Nation is the first in Netflix’s slate of original narrative features. On October 16, the movie debuted both in select theaters and on Netflix, arguably the highest profile example thus far of simultaneous theatrical and online release, bucking the norm of the conventional distribution window which gives theaters an initial stretch of exclusivity.
Fukunaga acknowledged that he had some trepidation about the prospects of a Netflix deal. “My fear initially when Netflix showed interest was that no one would be able to experience it [Beasts of No Nation] in theaters. I had spent two years in TV working on True Detective and I was looking forward to being back on the big screen. But I found out that there would be theatrical distribution and a campaign to find an audience in a Netflix deal. Netflix has 65 million subscribers worldwide so the potential is enormous. It’s a powerful outlet that amounts to a guarantee that Beasts of No Nation will have a big push behind it and that ultimately there will be eyes on the film both at homes and in theaters.”
Also helping the feature has been the critical acclaim it has received thus far, having been well received at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Fukunaga finds all this gratifying in that he has been wanting to make a movie about child soldiers for years. He was a political science/history major in college, developing an interest in neo-colonial countries and the war in Liberia. He later put together a feature treatment for NYU film school and even traveled to Sierra Leone in 2003. Two years later, a friend gave him a copy of the book “Beasts of No Nation.” In 2006 Fukunaga wrote a first draft of a script and the long road was underway to bring the project to fruition.
Collaboration
Fukunaga credited his many collaborators on the film, including editors Mikkel E.G. Nielsen and Pete Beaudreau, and costume designer Jenny Eagan. The latter worked with Fukunaga on True Detective which earned her a Costume Designers Guild Award (in the Outstanding Contemporary Series category) earlier this year (she garnered an additional Costume Designers Guild nomination as well as an Emmy nom for HBO’s Olive Kitteridge).
“Jenny is an amazing artist who did a lot with almost no staff and no budget, tackling a difficult time period, the late 1990s to early 2000s,” related Fukunaga. “She was so resourceful in her approach to Beasts of No Nation. I remember for example our having to age hundreds of military uniforms in a short period of time. She did so by throwing the uniforms into a cement mixer filled with gravel. Every step of the way she brought artistry, ingenuity and character development to the film.”
Beasts of No Nation adds to a feature filmography for Eagan which includes Contraband, Now You See Me, and the soon-to-be-released Our Brand Is Crisis.
As for editors Nielsen and Beaudreau, each spent four months on Beasts of No Nation, one following the other. “Mikkel hammered out and shaped the film, and then Peter came in and put special touches on it. They each brought a lot to the film,” assessed Fukunaga who worked closely with both. Nielsen has done extensive work in commercials (Delta for DGA Award-winning director Martin de Thurah, Miller helmed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Samsung, GE, Acura, Audi, Canal Digital, as well as the first brand work for YouTube), music videos (Feist, Katy Perry, James Blake), fashion films (BLK DNM) and features (A Royal Affair which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2013). Nielsen is on the roster of Rock Paper Scissors for commercials and branded content.
Beaudreau’s filmography includes a pair of J.C. Chandor-directed features: Margin Call, followed by All Is Lost starring Robert Redford. Beaudreau went on to edit the pilot for Showtime’s The Affair and then worked on the feature The Gambler which was directed by Rupert Wyatt and starred Mark Wahlberg.
Fukunaga also praised his cast. While Elba is an established performer, Attah was a street vendor with no prior filmmaking experience. But Fukunaga was drawn to the lad and cast him as Agu, the heart and soul of the film. He is critical to audiences connecting with the humanity—and inhumanity—of a story which many otherwise would feel detached from as nothing more than a news headline about a far-away place. Fukunaga said that he wanted to create an empathy for people with whom viewers previously may have felt that had nothing in common.
Table of Contents:
Lenny Abrahamson
Scott Cooper
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Brendan Gibbons
Lauren Greenfield
Todd Haynes
Ridley Scott
