He earned an Oscar nomination for his Netflix documentary “Audible” about the football team at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, Maryland.
Now, D.C. filmmaker Matt Ogens is out with his new documentary “Madu,” which screens at the AFI New African Film Festival at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Sunday and Tuesday before streaming on Disney+ on March 29.
“It’s always meaningful to be able to share it with the community that I grew up with,” Ogens told WTOP. “I was born in D.C. and grew up there, just outside of D.C. in Maryland. … So to go back with this new film, which is really near and dear and meaningful to me is great. Family, friends, people I grew up with, whoever wants to come, I look forward to being able to present the film and do a Q&A after. It means a lot.”
The film follows Anthony Madu, a Nigerian boy who became a viral ballet sensation.
“Two and a half years ago, my producer … sent me a text in the middle of the night, a video of this 11-year-old boy barefoot doing ballet moves in the rain,” Ogens said. “The video ended up going super viral, Viola Davis retweeted it and it really spun out and got a lot of attention. … He just said, ‘Find this kid.’ I was very curious. … Sometimes you just get these stories that just hit you in the gut. I wanted to know this kid’s story.”
After FaceTiming with Madu’s family, Ogens decided to codirect the documentary with Nigerian filmmaker Joel ‘Kachi Benson, flying a Disney camera crew to Africa to film in Madu’s home near Lagos, Nigeria.
“He grew up just on the outskirts of Lagos, about a two or three-hour drive away in an impoverished area that a lot of people in Downtown Lagos don’t even know exists, but there’s this beauty and love in his home, in his family, in his community,” Ogens said. “Juxtaposed against a kid who’s bullied and doesn’t really feel like he belongs because he does ballet. If you’re a kid in Nigeria, especially a boy, you don’t do ballet — you play soccer.”
During the production, Madu was accepted into the Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham, England.
“His mother gets a call from a very prestigious ballet school,” Ogens said. “They get to know him and they see and feel his passion the same way that we did and they offered him a full seven-year scholarship, which is amazing for him because suddenly he’s going to go to this new world where he is around people that value and appreciate ballet. He’s not going to get bullied, made fun of or mocked for doing ballet.”
Madu hopes to continue to inspire others by dancing as his lifelong career.
“His dream, as he states at the beginning, is to be a principal ballerina and really represent Nigeria wherever he goes,” Ogens said. “If he stays in England or comes to America or another country or comes back to Nigeria, it’s a win because he’s bringing that back with him. Really, he wants to inspire the rest of us in the world that we can dream big. Even though it seems impossible and so far off and Mount Everest to climb, it is possible.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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