Spanish sales company Latido Films has boarded international sales on North to Paradise” (“Viaje al país de los blancos,”) the feature debut of Barcelona-born director Dani Sancho, based on the life of Ghanaian activist and author Ousman Umar.
Produced by a powerful combination – Spain’s Mundo Cero Crea, Atresmedia Cine, A Contracorriente Films, Arcadia Motion Pictures and France’s Noodles Production – the film is set for a 2026 release in Spain through A Contracorriente Films.
Adapted from Umar’s bestselling memoir “North to Paradise,” the film follows a 14-year-old Ghanaian boy who leaves his village for Europe, imagining it as the “country of the whites.” After a perilous journey across Africa he arrives in Barcelona, where the reality of migrant life proves far removed from the promise he imagined. His fortunes begin to shift when he meets Montse, a woman who takes him into her family.
Today Umar is a prominent human rights activist, entrepreneur and founder of the NGO Nasco Feeding Minds, which builds computer-equipped schools in Ghana aimed at expanding digital education and addressing the factors that drive irregular migration.
“From the beginning we were clear that we did not want to portray Ousman either as a hero or as a victim,” Sancho told Variety. “We were interested in showing him as a complex person, with contradictions, curiosity and moments of impulsiveness.”
“For Latido it is a privilege to collaborate again with Antena 3, A Contracorriente and Ibon Cormezana in this portrait of an extraordinary life,” said Latido Films’ Antonio Saura. “We are proud to represent a film that tells the story of Ousman Umar, author and subject of the worldwide bestselling memoir ‘North to Paradise.’”
The film stars newcomers Victor Sey as young Ousman and Benjamin Kakraba as the teenage Umar, with Umar himself playing his adult self.
“He had to relive very difficult moments of his life, which was emotionally demanding, but it brings a very real emotion to the film,” Sancho said.
Veteran Catalan actress Emma Vilarasau, recently awarded multiple prizes for “House on Fire,” plays Montse.
Sancho, an ESCAC graduate who has worked across fiction, documentary and advertising, makes his feature debut after spending extended periods working in Africa and Los Angeles. The production was shot across multiple locations in Ghana, including Accra, Swedru and Elmina, as well as in Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia.
The film is written by Guillem Clua with cinematography by Noun, the duo of Lluís Ferrer and Marcel Pascual, and an original score by Laetitia Pansanel-Garric. Backing comes from Spanish public bodies ICAA and ICEC with participation from Movistar Plus+, 3Cat and Netflix.
Variety spoke with Sancho ahead of the film’s market screening at the Malaga Film Festival:
When did you first come into contact with Ousman Umar’s story?
About 10 years ago. A friend told me about Ousman’s story; it had a big impact on me and I wanted to meet him. I wrote to him and we arranged to meet. At that time Ousman was not yet a public figure and had not published his books.
He told me his story with incredible magnetism. What impressed me most was the way he told it: a certain rebelliousness toward the established order, but also an enormous curiosity about the world and a very unusual life force. I remember that at one point he said something that stayed with me: “My life is a bit like Benjamin Button’s: it runs in reverse. As a child I had to fight like an adult.”
That very lucid way of explaining his story made me realise I was in front of someone very special.
After that first meeting I suggested we meet again to do a recorded interview so that I could document his story. We spoke for almost four hours. There I discovered a story that was hard, but also very beautiful. I remember that at the end of that conversation I told him: we have to make a film about your life. From that point a relationship of friendship, respect and admiration began that has brought us to this moment.
The film foregrounds resilience but also survivor’s guilt. How did you navigate that balance without tipping into sentimentality or trauma spectacle?
Ousman’s story lives with a certain dualism. On the one hand, he went through a very traumatic experience; on the other, life has also given him unexpected opportunities. Survivor’s guilt is part of his story, but what is interesting is how he has transformed it. Instead of remaining trapped in that pain, he has decided to turn it into something useful: helping others. In some way, helping others has also been a way of helping himself.
From a narrative point of view, we tried to avoid any sensationalist view of trauma. In a way, the film begins where the headlines usually end. We were interested in understanding what happens after the migration journey and how someone lives with that past. In the film that guilt is present, but often it remains in the background, almost hidden. We do not dwell on it. Only at certain moments does it emerge more strongly and become a kind of emotional catharsis.
Montse avoids the trope of the “white saviour.” How did you work on that character with Emma Vilarasau?
Montse is intuition, strength, impulsiveness and heart. From the very beginning Emma understood how delicate this story could be and the importance of finding the right tone in every moment. For us it was very important that Montse did not become a symbol or a saviour figure. In fact, it was probably the most delicate point in the whole film. What we wanted to show was a very specific human encounter between two people at a particular moment in their lives.
In reality Ousman does not need anyone to save him. What he needs is an opportunity. He is a fighter, and that can be seen throughout the film.
Emma was deeply committed to the project. She rehearsed a lot with Ousman so that he would feel comfortable and protected during the shoot. We also went together to meet Montse and Armando, Ousman’s adoptive parents. There was immediate mutual respect.
What were the main challenges in financing the film?
Interestingly, we never approached the film as a drama about immigration. From the beginning we tried to move away from both miserabilism and triumphalism. We were not interested in making a film centred only on the drama of the migration journey, nor a simplified story of overcoming adversity.
Ousman’s story allowed us to talk about something more universal: the impulse we all have to discover the world and find our place in it. And also about the encounter between two people at a particular moment in their lives. It is also a true story, and that connects strongly with audiences and producers. It is a hard story, but also a luminous one.
Five years ago, we shot a teaser in Ghana with Ousman and a very small team. That teaser was very important because it allowed producers to see the potential of the story and to trust that I could direct the film. It also helped us access grants and involve different institutions, and to lay the foundations of the project. Many of the themes that later shaped the story were already present in that teaser: resilience, friendship, kindness and redemption.
You have a deep background in documentary and advertising work, with this your debut feature. What lessons from those fields did you bring into directing a narrative feature?
Advertising and documentary filmmaking have both been very important schools for me. From advertising I learned above all to be decisive. In advertising you always have very little time to shoot, which forces you to make quick decisions and solve complex scenes efficiently.
Documentary is almost the opposite: normally you have more time but fewer resources. That teaches you to improvise, to observe, and to make the most of what is already happening in front of the camera. This film has been a mixture of those two ways of working. It is a shoot with many locations and complex scenes: sequences at sea, chases, action, life in the African village… and we wanted to film everything with the maximum realism possible.
Shooting in Ghana was also an enormous challenge. Logistically it was very complicated and it was a very physical shoot. We had to work very closely with the local community and even create an artificial rain system for one scene because that kind of machinery did not exist there.
We were also working with many non-actors, so we decided to shoot many scenes with two cameras in order to capture spontaneous moments.
English (US) ·