Leone Stars wins TIFF’s Pitch This! as first documentary ever

Leone Stars directors Ngardy Conteh (left) and Allan Tong (right) during their presentation at Pitch This!
(photo: TIFF)

TORONTO (September 13, 2011) - Today the documentary Leone Stars beat five dramatic films at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Pitch This! competition. Co-directors Ngardy Conteh and Allan Tong presented their film to 15 judges and packed Bell Lightbox theatre. They walked away with the $10,000 development prize as the first documentary to win in the 12-year history of Pitch This! and only the second to ever compete.

Leone Stars was chosen the winner after Tong and Conteh's five-minute live pitch followed by two minutes of questions and answers from the jury of film and TV professionals. Tong and Conteh showed brief footage shot by DP Colin Akoon in March this year and, accompanied by Ghanian-Canadian musician Kobèna Aquaa-Harrison playing thumb piano, delivered a quasi-poem as a slideshow of images taken by photographers Fiona Aboud and Johnny Vong, played on the giant movie screen above. Their central motif was: "Do you believe a one-legged man can fly?"

TIFF's Christoph Straub (Manager of Industry Programming, Canadian Initiatives, TIFF) (far left) and Telefilm Canada's Anne Frank (far right) present Ngardy and Allan with their $10,000 prize (photo: TIFF)

“We worked on our pitch for weeks leading up to the event,” says Ngardy Conteh, “and it paid off. We are happiest for the subjects of the film, who deserve to have their story told.” 2005's Pitch This! winner, Richie Mehta (director, Amal) coached Conteh and Tong (as well as another team), and they also received useful feedback from friend and Montreal filmmaker David Eng. Tong wrote the pitch script while Ngardy edited the slideshow together and enlisted Aquaa-Harrison to play an African drum over the 28-second video footage and the thumb piano.

"I had in mind Richie's Amal pitch which revolved around the motif of an envelope," explains Tong. "I remember how simple, poetic and direct it was, and aimed for the same effect. By pure chance Richie was assigned our coach."

2011 has been touted as the Year of the Doc ever since TIFF announced David Guggenheim's rock doc about superstars U2, From The Sky Down, as the opening night film. Says Tong, “This is a victory for documentarians across Canada who have faced fewer and fewer sources of funding in Canada in recent years. And thanks to Telefilm and TIFF we can now go back to Africa to film the team as they compete at the All-African cup in Ghana.”

Leone Stars follows members of Sierra Leone's Single Leg Amputee Sports Club who are chosen for the national amputee soccer team. They were young boys when rebel soldiers hacked off their arms and legs during Sierra Leone’s ruthless civil war. Surviving poverty, war, and prejudice, the Sierra Leone amputee soccer team dreams of victory at the 2012 world championships. Leone Stars asks: Can victims become champions?


Leone Stars was the first documentary in English Canada to successfully raise over $20,000 in funding on the popular crowdfunding site, Kickstarter.com. The funds allowed the production team to travel to Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, and the southern province of Bo earlier this year. Additional funding is needed to follow the team to the world championships in 2012.

Leone Stars is being written and co-directed by Allan Tong and co-directed and edited by Ngardy Conteh. The film is produced by Walter Forsyth of Gorgeous Mistake Productions and executive produced by Jerry McIntosh.

For more information or interviews:
leonestarsdoc@gmail.com,
leonestars.blogspot.com
902.489.4897 (Walter Forsyth, producer)
647.200.9146 (Allan Tong, co-director)
416.897.5575 (Ngardy Conteh, co-director)

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video: the crew sets up in Bo province

Here's a quick and dirty video of the crew setting up in Bo, shot by photographer and production assistant Johnny Vong. That's co-director Ngardy Conteh holding the boom mic, and cinematographer Colin Akoon wearing the camera on a Steadicam:

Farewell & thank you, Sierra Leone

The crew are wrapping up a long, hard, but productive shoot that has seen its share of adventures. P.A. Johnny writes as he leaves Sierra Leone:

Got away from the big city for a few days, loved the sweet folks in Bo and Matru. People of Sierra Leone have nicknamed me JOHNNY BE GOOD. Swarm of children spontaneously broke out in song just for me (got video!). We stopped traffic in the crowded streets, and just about everywhere we went. Turned down a marriage proposal from an 11-year-old village girl.

Amazing time.

6 Questions with Johnny Vong

1) You're volunteering to help as a production assistant on this shoot. How come?

Strange, lovely, impeccable timing. I was in Barbuda for Ngardy's wedding in January when she told me that this project was all ready to go... crew, money, everything was coming together. I was very happy and excited for her. When I returned to Toronto, I got the unfortunate news that I've been laid off from my full time job....After telling her my story, I simply asked if I could come along with her to Sierra Leone. I agreed to pay for everything including my plane ticket with whatever money I had saved up. We both agreed: I was crazy.

2) In two sentences tell us about yourself.

I am a filmmaker, photographer, devoted cinephile. I'm adventure-seeking, energetic and passionate.

3) How do you know Ngardy?

We met while working together at a small production company many years ago.

4) How are you preparing?

I am reading a lot about the people and history of Sierra Leone right now. There's a lot of emotional territory for me to explore, and I know this research will greatly inform the thematic ideas around the images I capture.

5) Any expectations of what you'll see and experience?
Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the quality of life there is very low. I'm not expecting a holiday retreat. I'm expecting to experience first-hand what life in a country so recently ravaged by war, corruption and violence really feels like.

6) What do you intend to shoot?
We'll be shuttling back and forth between a quiet village and the busy city mayhem of Freetown. It's been ten years since the end of civil war, so it's an incredible opportunity to be able to capture the mood and atmosphere of a country rebuilding, with all its optimism as well as heartbreak. I will be using the images I capture from this project for a personal project...a kind of Chris Marker style film, a hybrid of narrative fiction and documentary, something kind of poetic, essayist or travelogue in form and genre.

Filming in Freetown in March

Director Ngardy Conteh cinematographer Colin Akoon will journey to Freetown and neighbouring villages from March 15 to 30 to capture the life stories of the Leone Stars amputee soccer team. Ngardy and Colin will also visit some of the villages from where the players hailed -- and escaped during the civil war.

Joining them on this trip will be Toronto photographer, Johnny Vong, who is generously donating his time to take pictures and help Ngardy and Colin.

During that war, the players were boys and young adolescents when rebel soldiers hacked off their arms and legs. This film will tell those stories and the hope that their team gives them in surviving in post-war Sierra Leone.

Ngardy will be blogging while she is there. Subscribe to this blog to receive regular updates.

This shoot is funded by generous donors through a recent Kickstarter campaign and a grant from the Toronto Arts Council.

Despite that, the production team is on a tight budget (nobody is making a dime off this film) and we're looking for a deal on P2 cards for our videocamera and a boom mic kit. If anyone in the Toronto area can offer us a reasonable rate on either or both items, please contact co-producer & writer Allan Tong. Thank you!

Next post:
Meet the film crew of the LEONE STARS documentary.

Cheers,
Allan Tong
Co-producer/writer