Kris Bowers On Creating A Love Letter To Ghana & Film History With His Score For ‘The Eyes Of Ghana’ – Sound & Screen Film

“We wanted this score to be a love letter to Ghana and to the history of film,” Kris Bowers says of his work on The Eyes of Ghana, the latest feature from Canadian filmmaker Ben Proudfoot.

The Oscar-winning musician was speaking at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Film event, where a live orchestra performed parts of Bowers’ score.

Directed by Proudfoot, with Barack and Michelle Obama and content creator IShowSpeed on board as producers, The Eyes of Ghana spotlights Chris Hesse, the 93-year-old forgotten personal cinematographer of revolutionary African leader Kwame Nkrumah. The Eyes of Ghana details the rise and fall of Nkrumah, a towering figure of African history who served as Ghana’s first President and led decolonial efforts across the continent.

Nkrumah was toppled in 1966 by a CIA-orchestrated military coup. As a result, the films made during Nkrumah’s time were ordered to be burned. Hesse is the film’s unsung cinematic hero, along with his protégé, filmmaker and producer Anita Afonu. The documentary unveils a huge archive of surviving celluloid films from Africa’s liberation era in the 20th century, which were long thought to be destroyed but were quietly safeguarded by Hesse for more than 60 years.

Bowers and Proudfoot previously worked together on the 2023 short The Last Repair Shop, which won the Documentary Short Film Oscar in 2024. The musician said he became involved with The Eyes of Ghana after Proudfoot sent him a sizzle reel of the footage he was working with.

“I remember watching it in my car,” Bowers says. “After I finished watching it, I was filled with emotion just because of how much, as a Black man, my own history is lost. And it’s sad that at some point you have to give up. So, the idea that someone like Chris Hesse has preserved this history and a vision of people that look like me that I had never seen from that era made me feel incredibly moved.”

The Eyes of Ghana was produced by Breakwater Studios’ Proudfoot and Nana Adwoa Frimpong, Afonu, Bwayo and Brandon Somerhalder alongside Higher Ground’s Ethan Lewis and Vinnie Malhotra. Barack and Michelle Obama are executive producers.

The film was released as a one-night theatrical event across the U.S. and Canada on October 28. It is currently enjoying a sold-out run at DocHouse in London. The film also screened at the Dikan Center in Accra, Ghana.