Idrissa Akuna Elba, also known as Idris Elba, is a British actor of Ghanaian descent who has been to the Manhyia Palace in the Asante Kingdom.
On Sunday, February 5, Elba paid respects to the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and the Asantehemaa Nana Konadu Yiadom III while attending the first Akwasidae of the year 2023.
The actor recorded some of his experiences at the Akwasidae festival when his production team was present. The clip, according to rumours, will be used in one of his next movies.
Every six weeks, the Akwasidae (Sacred Sunday) is observed at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi, Ashanti Region. It starts from the Asantehene’s throne room and is accompanied by sizable audiences dressed in traditional attire like the royal kente. The ceremony is centred on ancestor worship, remembering and acknowledging past monarchs, and different honourable feats.
Idris and his group visited President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Golden Jubilee House in Accra on Friday, February 3. He added that “our programme to develop film studios across Africa,” starting with Ghana and its West African neighbours, was what led to the visit.
The Hollywood celebrity revealed that while drinking with his crew, they realised that “policy is where the actual groundwork” needs to be done in order to realize the ideal for Africa.
Idris, 50, contended that the strategy to entice investors to the West African country will fail without the proper policy supporting filmmaking in Ghana.
“I’m led to believe that there are some plans for some other studios to be brought to Ghana which is fantastic and one should not cannibalize the other but without the policy component, I think, it’s safe to say that we can have as many studios as we want but we will not have the filmmakers attracted here,” he said.
He also highlighted a personal project he aims to bring to Ghana.
“What I want to do personally [is], I have a film that I am directing and I am hoping to bring that film or at least some of that film to shoot in Ghana. [For] that film, I would say we’d be here in December. We start pre-production in August. Some of the film, say two or three weeks, will be in Ghana, say by December,” he indicated.
In order to convince the worldwide movers and shakers in the film industry to invest in Africa, he declared his plan to use his movie as a pilot. He hoped for “a favourable wind” and agreement on what “we could achieve in terms of the policy.”
“Needless to say, it’ll take a lot of collaboration to move quickly. However, it would be very beneficial for us to show and to make an announcement to the world that Ghana is open for business [so] here [are] the steps, the policies are in place, and we are actually bringing a film [by] one of [those of] the soil,” he touched his chest proudly, “to our country and we’re going to put our money where our mouth is.”
Idris Elba played the titular role in the 2015 movie adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 novel Beast of No Nation, which took its name from a Fela Kuti album of the same name. Abraham Attah, a new movie star, was born as a result of the Ghana-shot, award-winning movie.
