Hero

Directed by Frances-Anne Solomon

Canada / Trinidad and Tobago, 2019 (fiction, 111 minutes, colour, English)

Also known as "Hero: Inspired by the Extraordinary Life & Times of Mr. Ulric Cross", "Hero: The Extraordinary Life of Mr. Ulric Cross"

Film Description:
"In 1941 Ulric Cross, a young man from Trinidad, leaves his island home to seek his fortune. He survives the War as the RAF's most decorated West Indian. Then, his life takes another course and he becomes part of the movement of history. Cross' long life spanned key moments of the 20th Century including independence in Africa and the Caribbean."
-- francesannesolomon.com (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Written by:	Frances-Anne Solomon
Produced by:	Frances-Anne Solomon, Timmy Mora, Christopher Laird, Ann Marie Desilva, Ernest Abbeyquaye, Nicola Cross, Mary Wells, Lesley-Anne MacFarlane, Holly Rowden, Anne Marie Stewart, Lisa Wickham
Principal Cast:	Kofi Adjorlolo, Jimmy Akingbola, Giles Alderson, Tessa Alexander, Adjetey Anang, Sam Asante, Jonathan Blaize, Ayinde Blake, Lionel Boodlal, Cherise Brown-Hammill, Valerie Buhagiar, Bracken Burns, Cedric Cilia, Ulric Cross, Keegan Cummins, Sebastian Deery, Salma Dharsee, John Dumelo, Chris Earle, Nikolai Sergio Emmanuel, Devante Goulbourne, Jessica B. Hill, Martin Huss, Fraser James, Sean Jones, John Samuel Kande, Steve Kasan, Steve Kerr, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Jordan Letlow, Faisal Lutchmedial, Joseph Marcell, Andy Marshall, Heidi Matijevic, Douglas Meyers, Daniel Montlouis, Joe Muwanga, Eddie Nartey, Pippa Nixon, JoAnn Nordstrom, Mike Odongkara, Ben Onwukwe, Prince David Oseia, Nickolas Otway, Freya Ravensbergen, Nickolai Salcedo, Kearn Samuel, Ryan Singh, O.C. Ukeje, Rudolph Walker, Barrington Williams, Leighton Alexander Williams, Peter Williams, Andy Wolf
Cinematography:	Jake Thomas, Walter Pacifico, Akley Olton, Steve Marshall, Robert Macfarlane
Film Editing:	Oren Harad, Charles Ross
Music:	John Welsman
Production Company:	CaribbeanTales

(sources)

Notes about Hero

Filmed in Toronto; Accra, Ghana; London, England; and Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago.

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"Ulric [Cross] had an incredible life, but he was an unknown and unsung hero. I feel that by showing [in Hero] the life of Ulric, the breadth, it really shows you how narrow we have been reduced, it really shows the possibilities of the kinds of stories that can be told about our people, and in that context, it breaks my heart that up until now the most common stories have been about drug dealers or gangs or prostitutes or slaves. Those are obviously some of the representations of our people, but we have so much more to do. We have comedies, we have tragedies, we have romances, there are so many different genres and so many different stories coming out of our experiences, not just as Caribbean people but people of the Caribbean diaspora, people from all over the world, and we are a multi-faceted, multi-cultural country that has so much rich heritage to share."
-- Frances-Anne Solomon (source)

Quotes about Hero

"There is something impudent and annoying about movies that try to teach us virtue. Don't we know what virtue is already? Yet Frances-Anne Solomon's Hero [...] gets away with goodness. Its style has a full-on naivety, faux or actual. The images hurtle out like comic-strip frames with matching simplified dialogue, as Solomon narrates the life of the title Trinidadian. Ulric Cross became a lawyer, then a world war hero (80 bombing trips over Germany), then a diplomat and key player in the liberation of new African nations: Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania. It isn't just a comic book for the education-needy. Even in the aesthetic Gatling fire of mixed techniques and sources—archive footage (sometimes colour-tinted), old photos, interviews, dramatised re-enactment—some scenes slow down to deliver a more sustained impact."
-- Nigel Andrews (source)

"Trinidadian lawyer and war hero Ulric Cross is not a name known to the public, but this engrossing biographical drama-documentary [Hero] shows how his life and times joined the dots between WWII valour and the tricky post-colonial transition for several new African republics. There's a little footage of Cross himself, resilient though ailing towards the end of his life—he passed away in 2013 at the age of 96—but to a great extent this is a reconstruction, scripted for actors, using a wealth of cannily chosen archive footage to fill in the backgrounds. Anglo-Trinidadian filmmaker Frances-Anne Solomon evidently had to work with modest budgetary means, but she deftly integrates newly shot interiors and car and train journeys within the fabric of vintage newsreel in a way that, while not exactly seamless, nevertheless draws us into the reality of these events and Cross's place in them."
-- Trevor Johnston (source)

"Released to coincide with Windrush Day, this engaged drama-documentary [Hero] pays tribute to Ulric Cross, the Trinidadian who became the most decorated of the RAF's West Indian recruits during the second world war; he later became a producer-presenter with the BBC, then a go-between in several African countries' struggles against imperialism. From the off, writer-director Frances-Anne Solomon strikes a wistful note, wavering between celebration of an extraordinary existence and regret around the aims unachieved in that lifetime."
-- Mike McCahill (source)

"Filmed with a cast of unknowns (though with a very compelling lead performance from newcomer Nickolai Salcedo as [Ulric] Cross), Hero finds clever ways to work around its financial limitations, making inventive, stylised use of cheap archive footage."
-- Tristram Fane Saunders (source)

Bibliography for Hero

Articles from Newspapers, Magazines, or News Websites

Andrews, Nigel. "Hero is a remarkable film about a virtuous man." Review of Hero. Financial Times (London), October 2, 2019.
Johnston, Trevor. "Hero." Review of Hero. Sight & Sound, vol. 29, no. 10, October 2019.
Maher, Kevin. "Hero: Inspired by the Extraordinary Life and Times of Mr Ulric Cross review—war hero's tale dulled by am-dram." Review of Hero. Times (London), October 4, 2019.
McCahill, Mike. "Hero review—biopic of a world-changing Trinidadian war hero." Review of Hero. Guardian, June 21, 2019.
McCallister, Jared. "Film story of Trinidad and Tobago-born Ulric Cross' story—from World War II flying ace to influential Pan-African activist—screens in Los Angles Tuesday." Daily News (New York), February 8, 2020.
Mondezie, Michael. "Vivid depiction of a hero: Film on life of Ulric Cross." Daily Express (Trinidad and Tobago), September 20, 2018.
Saunders, Tristram Fane. "The heroic life that's finally on the silver screen." Daily Telegraph (UK), June 20, 2019.
Surtees, Joshua. "Hero's journey from Hitler to Africa overshoots target." Review of Hero. Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, September 16, 2018.

Web Sites about Hero

"IMDb: Hero Inspired by the Extraordinary Life & Times of Mr. Ulric Cross." Internet Movie Database, Inc. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4218012/reference.