Chiwetel Ejiofor: the story behind my first feature
Netflix's latest film, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, sees Chiwetel Ejiofor stepping behind the camera for an inspiring tale of a Malawian boy with a cunning plan to save his village. Here he tells us why making movies is like hitting turbulence mid-flight.
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s first feature as director, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, is a brisk, optimistic drama about a 13-year-old Malawian boy who creates a windmill to help save his village from starvation. It’s a feel-good adaptation of William Kamkwamba’s memoir, featuring Maxwell Simba as the teenage William, who must use his hardscrabble engineering talent to win over his sceptical father, Trywell (Ejiofor), and other locals who’ve been left with a grain shortage after a flood.
Ejiofor, who also wrote the script based on Kamkwamba’s book, got his big breakthrough with a supporting role in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1997). He’s since worked with many more of the biggest directors in Hollywood and beyond, including Alfonso Cuarón in Children of Men (2006), Ridley Scott in American Gangster (2007) and The Martian (2015), and Spike Lee in She Hate Me (2004) and Inside Man (2006). Most memorable of all was his turn as Solomon Northup in the lead role of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013), a film that won McQueen a best picture Oscar as producer and Ejiofor a best actor nomination.
Meeting Ejiofor at the Berlin Film Festival, we discussed how his first feature came to be.
What first grabbed you about Kamkwamba’s memoir?
I was so moved by William’s story. It’s about somebody who really lived in the situation and was able to identify the solution and, against all the odds, move in that direction. I thought it would be very powerful, and it had all these layerings to it about the environment, economics and family dynamics. I thought all of those things together could make a very impactful film.
There’s a political element to it as well.
The overall geopolitical situation is very important in the story. It talks about deregulation, essentially, or unregulated markets: the idea of the amount of grain going down and prices going up and freezing out this kind of rural community that can no longer afford the grain. That’s in a micro sense.
In a macro sense, around 2009, we were talking about that on a large scale in the west. We were talking about unregulated markets and the collapse of the global economy.
When I was writing the film, it seemed very far-fetched that in a western environment there’d be any leader pointing at people and [them] getting sent out of rallies and beaten up. But then those sorts of things started to happen, so it all became very interesting; this dynamic was talking about a very specific, authentic experience for the Malawian population but also had resonances that were global.
It’s an ambitious film for a debut. Did you feel any nervousness that you might have taken on too much when you were making it?
It’s like when you’re on a flight and you hit turbulence, and you look at the steward or the stewardess and you’re trying to see whether they’re panicking, and if they look normal you think “OK, maybe it’s alright.” I think I did that kind of thing with [cinematographer] Dick Pope and Valerio Bonelli, the editor who was out there. That sense of “We still good?”
As an actor, you’ve worked with many great directors. Did you get any advice from them while making this film?
During the editing process I invited Steve McQueen and Stephen Frears on separate occasions. That was really informative.
They both talked about what engaged them in the story and what had surprised them and how they felt about it. For Frears he was talking more about how the economic dynamic really impacted him. McQueen talked a lot about the father-son dynamic and the interpersonal dynamics that resonated with him very strongly.
I paraphrase slightly but Sam Peckinpah said a film shoot is like mining the ore, and the edit is where you create the diamonds. Was editing a rewarding process?
It’s a hard process. You’re mining the diamonds, but you’re also drowning the puppies. It’s a brutal experience, because you have all of these things that you’ve been carrying for so long – moments, dynamics – that you then put into the film, and some of them don’t make it into the film. That can be a very tricky and painful experience, the way that films change and you have to let things go. But equally there are things that come to life – thematic strands, performances. In the editing process you really see them shine, and that’s a wonderful feeling.
Are there any big cinematic influences on the film?
Tons. One of the films that I looked at was a film that is not really known any more called Harvest: 3,000 Years (1976), made by Haile Gerima. It’s not been that discussed as a movie. It’s an absolutely amazing film from an incredible filmmaker who’s a professor of film at Howard University. The BFI were able to source it for me. I think it’s an incredibly moving film because it’s so steeped in the culture of African cinema. It was something I really responded to, and it was a very strong influence.
Has your experience getting behind the camera changed the way you look at filmmaking?
Totally. It expands the horizon of the way you look at filmmaking and its holistic quality. It’s also slightly bittersweet in a way, because it removes from you that sense of being lost in a movie. That’s removed a little bit by acting in films but is totally removed once you start directing them. Now I have an eye on the technical aspects of the film that runs alongside commentary in my mind as I’m watching. You think “There was a time when I didn’t have that,” but that’s the only minor quibble that I have.
