He hopes to use the film to raise money for orphans in Uganda

By Forrest Adams

Orphans in Africa are the subject line of countless fundraisers, the images of many infomercials, the topics of many church missions. Alex Fournier, 30, of Eden Prairie decided to take a few steps further, traveling to Africa to spend times in a boys' home that's sponsored by his church.

The former Chanhassen resident went to Uganda to teach the orphans art. During several trips over one-and-a-half-year time period, he wrote a story and filmed a full-length feature film starring the orphans themselves.

Now he’s sending it to film festivals to attract publicity and or partners/distributors for the fiction movie that’s based on the reality many of the orphans have lived.

 The 1997 Chaska High School graduate who grew up in Chanhassen talked about the film that took him more than a year to shoot and three years to edit, saying it stars orphans because it is meant to shine a light on their predicament and give them hope.

He himself wants to give them a voice to speak with the world. “The idea is that these kids are more than orphans,” he said. “I want to show the world and America that these kids have amazing stories. We should be tapping into these stories, for the purposes or education and entertainment, to show the world what’s going on over there.”

Sadness, comedy and excitement burned onto one hour and forty minutes of DVD, the movie is called Abanunule (The Redeemed). It’s a story of redemption, set at a boys’ home and shot on the streets and in the alleys of Kampala, the nation's capital city.

Shooting the film, Fournier discovered “a rainbow of dark.”

“For me it was really exciting. The country there is beautiful. You watch the local people walk by, and you’re pointing the camera at them. You see even with the naked eye it looked like a tinted photograph because of the variations or dark on skin,” he said.

Within that scene, there’s turmoil. AIDS, violence and abuse have caused huge numbers of orphans to flee to the street to fight for their own survival. Many of the kids turn to drugs and violence. The drug of choice there is petrol. They sniff gas. Many of the orphans have themselves recovered from drug problems. It was a logical choice to create tension in the movie.

The story is like a compilation of stories, fiction, based on much of what the actors have experienced in their lives. It follows a 17-year-old former street orphan, Freddy, who gives up his positive life at the boys’ home to return to drugs and violence on the street. With his departure, the rest of the boys in the home must learn to live without Freddy while they also try to get their soccer team into the finals without their star defensive player. One child, Patrick, sells what he can for taxi money and sets out alone to travel into the roughest parts of the city to find Freddy and bring him back.

Abanunule: Contact Alex Fournier at (763) 226-4285 about holding a movie screening. For more information, go to www.abanunule.net