BBC Film
BFI
Participant
Potboiler Productions
Not part of a collection.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Against all the odds, a thirteen year old boy in Malawi invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine.
- Original title
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
- Language
- EN
- Country
- GB,MW
- Budget
- —
- Revenue
- —
CinemaSerf
Mar 28, 2022 · via TMDB
This is a great looking film depicting the abject poverty, despite their best efforts, of a subsistence farming community in Malawi. The cinematography is glorious as we follow the Kamkwamba family's struggles to educate their children and feed themselves at the same time - in the face of some pretty brutal government corruption and a severe drought. Son "William" (Maxwell Simba) is thirteen, and he has more than an average degree of nouse to him - he concludes, after studying a few engineering books in his school's library - that by cannibalising an old bike and an old ghetto-blaster, he can create a turbine mechanism that could be used to generate electrical power to pump water and help them to improve their harvest, and their lives... Chiwitel Ejiofor is his rather sceptical father, struggling under the pressures of keeping his family alive and the two have quite a forceful battle of wills as the young man attempts to convince his father that sacrificing the family's only mode of transport is a risk worth taking! I found the establishing parts of the story a bit too slow; once I understood the extent of their predicament and what the young man was trying to do, I was itching for him to succeed - and the behaviour of the father I found irritating and incongruous, slightly, with a man so keen on educating his family. That said, once it starts to focus on the project, I was astonished by the ingenuity of "William" and his young student friends as they materially change the lives of their famines for ever. It's a good film this - a try triumph of optimism over experience that I largely enjoyed watching.
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
Netflix
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Maxwell Simba
William Kamkwamba
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Trywell Kamkwamba
Aïssa Maïga
Agnes Kamkwamba
Lily Banda
Annie Kamkwamba
Joseph Marcell
Chief Wembe
Lemogang Tsipa
Mike Kachigunda
Noma Dumezweni
Edith Sikelo
Tulé Peak
Production Design
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director
Valerio Bonelli
Editor
Tom Harberd
Associate Producer
Alexa L. Fogel
Casting
Compton Ross
Executive Producer
Jeff Skoll
Executive Producer
Jonathan King
Executive Producer
Natascha Wharton
Executive Producer
Norman Merry
Executive Producer
Peter Hampden
Executive Producer
Phil Hunt
Executive Producer
Gail Egan
Producer
Antonio Pinto
Original Music Composer
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Screenplay
49 Days
Two Harbors
Schindler's List
GoodFellas
The Pianist
Saving Private Ryan
Papa
Drei Tage im April
Braveheart
Flamin' Hot
Titanic
Downfall
A Beautiful Mind
The Straight Story
Hotel Rwanda
All the President's Men
Girl, Interrupted
Changeling
JFK
Cinderella Man
Gandhi
Donnie Brasco
Almost Famous
Arthur the King
Peaceful Warrior
Apollo 13
The Hurricane
Enemy at the Gates
Erin Brockovich
Chaplin
Boys Don't Cry
The Last Duel
Blow
Black Hawk Down
The African Queen
Komang
Bloody Sunday
Spare Parts
The Aviator
Out of Africa
Susi Susanti: Love All
12 Mighty Orphans
Seabiscuit
Cool Runnings
Born on the Fourth of July
Shattered Glass
Heavenly Creatures
Valkyrie
Sam Bahadur
Soldier Boy
The Dam Busters
Hard Miles
Frances
The Queen
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Flags of Our Fathers
23
The Bounty
Marco: The Invented Truth
The Long Run
55 Steps
Katyn
The Return of Martin Guerre
Made in Dagenham
Breach
Military Wives
Black Mass
Private Parts
Apollo 11: First Steps on the Moon
The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case
Bluebeard
Sommersby
White Boy Rick
Mr. Kingstreet's War
Wonderland
Fort Saganne
The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Fairyland
Lakshmi
Leroy
Justice for Annie
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan
She Walks by Night
End of Trip, Sahara
Bugatti: The Final Race
Densha Otoko Deluxe: The Final Crusade
El profesor
Children of Nowhere
Sarah's Oil
Desert Flower
The Longest Day
Gandhi
Erin Brockovich
Richard Jewell
The Last of the Mohicans
Lion of the Desert
The Great Debaters
Fatima
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
The Rainmaker
The Vikings
JOY
I Am David
The Boy in the Woods
A Call to Spy
A United Kingdom
Gold
Shirley
Flash of Genius
Dark of the Sun
Flyboys
Starving in Suburbia
Homestead
The Wind and the Lion
Skin
The Mosquito Coast
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Origin
Endless Night
On Fire
Jan 25, 2019
Sundance Film Festival
Mar 1, 2019
Netflix
