Young Ghanaian rising actor Abraham Attah has received yet another award, this time the rising star award, from the Black Film Critics Circle for his role in the movie “Beasts of No Nation.”

    The U.S. Critics’ Association said the Ghanaian’s debut as an African child soldier was “one of the strongest and most phenomenal we have ever seen” and said he had “a very bright future ahead of him.”

    Attah, 14, shot to fame after he won the Marcello Mastroianni’s best young actor award at the 2015 Venice Film Festival for his performance as Agu, an 11-year-old orphan-turned-child soldier in an unnamed African country.

    Attah, who is said to be without any acting background, was picked from the streets of Ghana during the shooting of Netflix’s movie “Beasts of No Nation.”

    To find Agu, casting director Harrison Nesbit arrived in Accra, Ghana, two months before filming began, where he circulated fliers throughout the city and visited schools and soccer games on a rented motorbike.

    “I saw that among a group of boys skipping class near a school in a slum was this young looking guy, maybe 13 or 14. I asked him if he was interested in auditioning for a film. He said, ‘No, not really.’ I guess he was shy. But later, kids kind of pushed him to do it. And once he got on camera, he just started rapping and there was just this kind of a charm about him, and we invited him to come to a callback session.”

    At the callback session, Attah “requested that he stay for the entire day because he was enjoying it so much,” Nesbit said.

    As part of the process, Nesbit would show the kids clips of war films and get them to reenact some of the scenes. Although Attah had no acting experience, he was a natural and even cried during the audition. Though he had never been a child soldier, he had seen enough hardship in his young life that he seemed to naturally understand Agu’s situation.

    Attah recently landed another international movie role and will be a part of the adventure drama “The Modern Ocean” alongside A-List Hollywood actors, including Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves and Daniel Radcliffe.

    (SD-Agencies)