Abraham Attah up against Will Smith, others for award

Young actor, Abraham Attah faces tough competition in his quest to win his first NAACP Image Awards this Friday February 5, 2016.

He comes up against Will Smith, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Micheal Ealy and Micheal B. Jordan for the ‘Oustanding Actor in a Motion Picture’ Award.

The National Association for Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) Image Awards is an awards scheme to honour people of colour in film, television, music and literature.

This year’s will be hosted by Actor and Comedian Anthony Anderson, and held at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, California in the United States of America.

Abraham Attah played the lead role of Agu, who when civil war tears his family apart, is forced to join a unit of mercenary fighters and transformed into a child soldier.
Attah won Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor at Venice Film Festival 2015. He also won ‘Rising Star Award’ at the Black Fim Critics Circle (BFCC). The award scheme called Attah’s role as “one of the strongest and most phenomenal we have ever seen” and added that he had “a very bright future ahead of him”.
Idris Elba played the commander of the mercenary unit. He won ‘Male Actor in a Supporting Role’ award for the role at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards held over the weekend.

Based on the 2005 novel of the same title by Uzodinma Iweala, the movie was shoot in Ghana and also stars Ama K. Abebrese, Fred Amugi and Grace Nortey.

It was directed by Emmy Award-winning Cary Fukunaga, and the first fictional feature produced and distributed by Streaming Service Netflix.

The movie was premiered in Ghana last year. Before that, it premiered on Netflix and in selected Theaters in The United States of America on October 16.

It was screened at number of prestigious film festivals including Venice, BFI London and Toronto International Film Festival.