Accra, Ghana—About 40 young Ghanaian actors, wearing western brand names and flashy gold and silver rings and chains, lean in close. They're taking in every word director Bruno Pischiutta has to say about filmmaking.

It's Pischiutta's last day in Ghana. He's just finished filming Punctured Hope, the latest production by his Canadian company, Toronto Pictures. The young actors, all of whom are enrolled in the Film Academy of Ghana, established by Toronto Pictures last May, make up the all-African cast of the film.

The feature film, now in post-production in Toronto, tells the devastating story of trokosi, an outlawed but still-practiced Ghanaian tradition in which a young girl is given as a slave to the priest at a local fetish shrine as an atonement for some perceived sin of her family. It's a life that survivors say is filled with sexual abuse, torture and hard labour.

And it's a life that Pischiutta hopes to show to the world. Although the movie does not yet have a distributor, Pischiutta hopes to submit it for consideration for the 2006 Cannes International Film Festival in May if he can finish the film by a March 20 deadline.

A 2004 human rights report on Ghana by the U.S. State Department estimated there are about 100 girls and women living as trokosi slaves in the country, though specific numbers are hard to pinpoint. While sexual abuse is not a traditional part of the practice, local and international human rights advocates say it happens often. "We wanted to do (Punctured Hope) because we believe it's more than a film," Pischiutta told a contingent of Ghanaian reporters at a press conference just before the film's wrap party.

"It can be something that changes peoples' lives." Toronto Pictures specializes in making socially aware films. Its recently released Maybe deals with the eating disorder bulimia and the Toronto-based company has films about lost virginity and life in modern China coming up.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969483191630

i hope this one will be ooooooo is a bad custom ghana da ben na yen so ye be ye yie

Interesting. i hope this is the start of something positive.

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You have done it again, Jehovah Jireh, Lord of lords, Prince of peace. I worship, praise and Thank You. You have been soooo faithful. I am sooo grateful.

Thank God someone is finally speaking out on this primitive culture. It is practiced in a certain part of the Volta region in Ghana. Certain Christian organizations have spoken against it, but it's all proved futile because the parents of these innocent girls believe in this indigenous practice and think that if they behave otherwise, their entire families would be wiped out. May God really help us so that this barbaric act will be ceased entirely.

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Psalm 34 vrs. 19
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him from them all.

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You have done it again, Jehovah Jireh, Lord of lords, Prince of peace. I worship, praise and Thank You. You have been soooo faithful. I am sooo grateful.

eti sen cyndi?


[quote=cyndi] [/QUOTE

eye sis. Ya hwe wo pm why.

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You have done it again, Jehovah Jireh, Lord of lords, Prince of peace. I worship, praise and Thank You. You have been soooo faithful. I am sooo grateful.

Trokosi has been taken very seriously by several NGO(s) and inview of that lots and lots of people are aware of this madness. The publicity and the education has gone a long way to help the parents of these innocent girls. So my dear goseiant, it will be over soon.

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A MAN DIES DAILY, ONLY TO BE REBORN IN THE MORNING BIGGER, BETTER AND WISER

Thank God for that

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You have done it again, Jehovah Jireh, Lord of lords, Prince of peace. I worship, praise and Thank You. You have been soooo faithful. I am sooo grateful.