Cary Fukunaga followed up his exceptional directing for True Detective (the great first season, not the disappointing second) with a shift away from television directing and into feature films with Beasts Of No Nation, a harrowing portrait of a vicious tribal warlord and his child soldiers. Idris Elba finally got a chance to sink his teeth into a substantial leading role, and his performance as the Commandant of an army of child soldiers is intense and engaging. But Elba really plays second fiddle to the young Ghanian actor Abraham Attah, who plays a young boy by the name of Agu, swept up into the violent conflict which rages across his sun-scorched homeland. Fukunaga's camera insistently tracks the boy as he is drafted into the fighting forces and made to perform unspeakable acts of horror in the name of "freedom", by turns weary and defeated and bravely resilient to the nightmarish world around him. His upcoming role in the next film by Shane Curruth, The Modern Ocean, should be one to watch out for.
