Nigeria and France / 2007 / 110mins / Drama, War / English

One fateful morning, as seven-year-old Ezra skips on his way to school, he is kidnapped by rebels and taken into the jungle to be trained as a soldier. Seven years later, Ezra sits in front of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he is asked to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of facts from the night of a devastating attack on a village. When Ezra's mute sister, Onitcha, chooses to reveal a secret she has kept from her brother, what is supposed to be a confession of a former child soldier attempting to find internal peace after the horrors he witnessed, soon becomes a trial for the previously committed combatant in Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war. Ezra was the Winner of the Stallion de Yennenga at FESPACO 2007, INALCO Award, and UNFPA Award.

Newton I. Aduaka

Born in Eastern Nigeria in 1966, Newton's family relocated to Lagos in 1970 at the end of the Biafran War. In 1985 he left for England to study engineering but discovered cinema and attended the London International Film School, graduating in 1990. In 1997 he established Granite Film Works. In 2001 Newton's debut feature film Rage, became the first wholly independently financed film by a black filmmaker in the history of British cinema to be released nationwide. It opened to critical acclaim. Between 2005 and 2007 he co-wrote, directed and executive produced Ezra, his first non-independently funded film, for Arte France. In 2001-2002 he was Filmmaker in Residence at Festival de Cannes' Cinéfondation in Paris. Learn More