Frances-Anne Solomon on the making of HERO

“Hero: The Extraordinary Life of Mr. Ulrich Cross”--a recommended watch for all; especially those of Afro-Caribbean descent. Framed from the perspective of a daughter wanting to learn the life of her father, this film highlights the life and times of Ulrich Cross: a Trinidadian-born airforce navigator who served in World War II as part of the Royal Air Force. Described as the most decorated West Indian airman of the war, he would go on to help lay the foundation(s) for the early establishment of the United States of Africa and give rise to the Pan-African movement.

This film is a mix of documentary and narrative style storytelling, featuring archival clips, interviews of Mr. Cross and his wife Ann (conducted by their daughter Nicola, played by Jessica B. Hill); making for a kaleidoscope-like experience–flashing Mr. Cross’ incredible life before [y]our eyes. From a traumatic childhood to a battlefield, Mr. Cross had to reckon with the notion that his accomplishments and accolades did naught to protect him and his peers from their blackness. Though a hero of war with significant victories on his record, his life afterwards was a battle against an ever-looming white-faced enemy with invisible hands, long reach, and tactics most underhanded and overbearing.

It’s a personal film but it tells the tale of the still on-going seesaw/saga of the black struggle for liberation from colonial clutches and black triumph, with an overarching theme of searching for belonging in the world. 

The Yaad recently interviewed Frances-Anne Solomon on the making of “Hero: The Extraordinary Life of Mr. Ulrich Cross”.

How did you approach the project, and streamlining the story that came out at the end?

I approached HERO very slowly, and very deliberately.

The first thing I did was listen. When Desmond died, I interviewed Ulric, and at that point I genuinely thought I was making a documentary. I laid those interviews out chronologically and looked at the shape of his life, but very quickly I realised that while Ulric could tell you what happened, he was much more guarded about how it felt. As a filmmaker, that’s the real challenge, getting under the anecdotes and into the blood and guts of the man.

So the next phase was deep research. I spent about a year immersing myself in the history of the places he talked about, Britain during the war, Ghana at independence, Tanzania, Congo, because his life was not just a biography, it was the story of a moment in world history: the fall of empire and the possibility of something new. That’s where it became clear that I couldn’t tell everything. I had to decide what the film was really about.

The breakthrough came when I understood that Ulric’s life had to be the backbone, the hanger, on which everything else rested. His story allowed me to touch the wider movements without being overwhelmed by them. From there, streamlining became an act of choice and discipline: letting go of important events so that the emotional and political through-line could remain clear.

Formally, I also had to find a way in. That’s where the decision to tell the story through a female, generational lens came from, through the character of Nicola. She represents my point of view: another generation, another gender. Once I had that perspective, the narrative snapped into focus.

Finally, I used technique to do what resources couldn’t. Intercutting archive, inserting ourselves back into history, working with sound and editing to create scale, all of that helped me streamline without diminishing.

Mr. Cross said he didn't like being called a hero. Why put that title on his/this story anyway?

Ulric absolutely didn’t like being called a hero, and that mattered to me.

People like him, from that generation, didn’t see themselves that way. They did what needed to be done. They saw service, responsibility, and sacrifice as normal, not exceptional. In fact, Ulric was quite amused by the idea of heroism; he would laugh at it. That humility is part of who he was.

But the title HERO isn’t really for Ulric alone. It’s for us.

One of the reasons I felt so strongly about using that word is because of how people who look like us are so often framed in the media, as victims, as problems, or as footnotes to history. We rarely see ourselves reflected as competent, visionary, effective human beings who shaped the modern world. Ulric did exactly that, whether or not he claimed the label.

Calling the film HERO was a deliberate act of reclamation. It was about challenging who we are taught to see as heroic, and who history decides is worthy of remembrance. Ulric’s life tells us that heroism doesn’t have to be loud or self-declared. It can look like integrity, commitment, intellect, and a lifetime of service carried out quietly.

And beyond Ulric, the title is also an invitation. It’s a reminder, especially to younger people, that there were heroes before us, and that we can be heroes too. Not in a mythical sense, but in very real, everyday ways: by standing up, by contributing, by refusing to disappear.

So even though Ulric may not have liked the word, I felt the story demanded it. The title isn’t about ego. It’s about visibility, recognition, and restoring a truth that has been missing for far too long.

At the heart of the film, is the love story between Ulric and Anne. What was the process of bringing their story to screen and even spotlighting Anne’s contribution to all the events that was happening, especially when many women are usual left out of historical narratives? 

That love story was absolutely essential to me, it wasn’t an embellishment, it was the key to understanding who Ulric really was.

When I met Anne, what struck me immediately was her clarity, her courage, and her political consciousness. She wasn’t simply “the wife of” a public figure. She was an activist in her own right, a woman who made very conscious choices about how she wanted to live, who she wanted to stand beside, and what kind of world she wanted to help build. Their relationship was a partnership, and without that partnership, Ulric’s life simply doesn’t make sense.

In historical narratives, women are so often erased or reduced to the background, particularly when the story centres on political movements or so-called “great men.” As a woman filmmaker, I was deeply aware of that trap, and I was determined not to repeat it. Anne travelled with Ulric, endured displacement, surveillance, danger, and cultural isolation. She bore the personal costs of those political choices, and she did so with integrity and agency.

The process of bringing their story to the screen began with listening. I interviewed Anne, and I paid close attention not just to what she said, but to how she understood her life, her humour, her honesty, her refusal to romanticise hardship. From there, it became important to frame their relationship as a love story rooted in shared values, not sentimentality. Love, in this context, was political. It was about solidarity, trust, and mutual respect across enormous cultural and historical divides.

It was also important to me not to position Anne as an outsider looking in. Although she was white, she committed herself fully to that life and that struggle. She didn’t stand apart from it, she became part of it. That challenged easy assumptions about race and belonging, and it allowed the film to ask deeper questions about what solidarity really looks like.

By foregrounding Anne’s role, I was also making a broader statement: that women have always been central to movements of transformation, even when history refuses to acknowledge them. Anne’s story, like so many others, reminds us that the private sphere and the political sphere are not separate. They shape each other.

In that sense, telling their love story was another way of putting women back into history, not as footnotes, but as forces.

Throughout the films, we see many archival images and interviews from the Cross family. What was it like working with the family to document these stories and sourcing through the family archives? 

Working with the Cross family was an act of trust, and I never took that lightly.

From the very beginning, this film only existed because of generosity. Ulric’s generosity in allowing me to interview him, and Nicola’s generosity in opening her family’s life to me. When someone hands you their photographs, their letters, their private memories, they’re not just giving you material, they’re giving you responsibility.

Nicola was central to that process. She didn’t simply provide access; she helped me understand the man behind the public figure. Through her, I began to see Ulric not only as a decorated soldier or a diplomat, but as a father, a husband, a human being who made choices, compromises, and sacrifices. The family archive carried emotional weight, and I felt very strongly that it had to be treated with care and dignity, not as historical “evidence,” but as lived experience.

Sifting through those materials was often very moving. There’s something profoundly grounding about holding a photograph or reading a letter and realising that history isn’t abstract, it’s intimate. These were ordinary family moments that existed alongside extraordinary world events, and that tension is what gave the film its texture.

The archival material also shaped the structure of the film. Seeing Ulric at different stages of his life, young, confident, ageing, reflective, reinforced my decision to interweave his real voice with the dramatized narrative. It allowed the audience to encounter him directly, to look into his eyes, to hear his laughter, his irony, his distance from the word “hero.” That connection could only happen because the family trusted me to tell the story honestly.

Throughout the process, I was very conscious that this wasn’t my story alone. I was a custodian, not an owner. Every choice, what to include, what to leave out, was made with the understanding that these materials belonged first to a family, and then to a larger collective memory that had been denied space for too long. In the end, working with the Cross family reinforced everything I believe about storytelling: that it is relational, that it requires care, and that when it’s done with integrity, it can honour both the private and the public truth at the same time.

Was there any pushback from Mr. Cross (or his family) or subsequently distributors about telling this particular story at this particular time?

Yes, there was pushback, but it came in very different ways, and at different moments.

From Ulric himself, the resistance was never political, it was emotional. He wasn’t opposed to the story being told, but he was a very private man. He had survived by being guarded. He belonged to a generation that learned, quite deliberately, how much of themselves to reveal in order to live a long life. So while he was generous with facts and anecdotes, getting beneath that, into feeling, loss, doubt, was difficult. That wasn’t opposition, exactly, but it was a kind of quiet resistance that shaped how I had to work. It required patience, respect, and listening between the lines.

With the family, there was no pushback in the sense of disagreement, but there was a deep and understandable protectiveness. This was their father, their husband, their private world. Trust had to be earned. I was very clear from the beginning that I wasn’t interested in myth-making or exposure for its own sake. I wanted to honour the complexity of who he was, and once that was understood, the relationship became collaborative rather than cautious.

The real resistance came from outside.

For years, from funders and distributors, the response was essentially: this is not a story. Or, more precisely, this is not a story we know what to do with. A Black Caribbean man as a World War II hero, a Pan-African legal architect, moving between the Caribbean and Africa, it didn’t fit familiar categories. It wasn’t slavery. It wasn’t crime. It wasn’t entertainment as they understood it. And often, no explanation was even offered, just a polite dismissal.

Timing mattered enormously. For most of the decade, I was making HERO, the industry simply wasn’t ready. Then, suddenly, the world shifted. After George Floyd, after #MeToo, after a renewed reckoning with empire, the very same story began to be described as “timely.” I found that both ironic and revealing, because the story hadn’t changed, only the willingness to hear it had.

So yes, there was pushback. But that resistance ultimately confirmed why the film needed to exist. These are precisely the stories that are delayed, discouraged, and denied until history forces the conversation. Making HERO was about refusing to wait for permission, and trusting that the right time, even if it came late, would come.

There were many current and future stars of the performing arts in the film – from the likes of Joseph Marcell to Eric Kofi Abrefa. What was your experience like working with cast, especially when they were playing some of the most iconic figures in Global Black history? 

Working with this cast was one of the great privileges of making the film. Many of the actors who came into HERO understood immediately that this was not just another job. They knew who they were being asked to embody, people like George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Amy Garvey, figures who are not only historical, but deeply symbolic within Global Black consciousness. That carries a responsibility, and every actor felt it.

What struck me most was the level of preparation and humility they brought. These were not performances driven by ego or imitation. The actors approached these roles with respect, curiosity, and care. They asked questions, did their own research, and constantly checked in about intention. They weren’t trying to “play icons”; they were trying to understand human beings who lived under extraordinary pressure.

There was also a powerful sense of lineage in the room. Actors like Joseph Marcell bring decades of experience and gravitas, and younger actors like Eric Kofi Abrefa came in with an acute awareness that they were stepping into a continuum. That intergenerational exchange was very moving to witness. It mirrored the film itself, elders passing knowledge forward, and younger voices carrying it into the future.

Because the film was made under very challenging conditions, there was also an unusual level of collective commitment. People weren’t there for glamour or money, often there wasn’t any. They were there because the story mattered. That created a set where collaboration came naturally, where everyone understood that they were contributing to something larger than themselves.

I was also very conscious of protecting the actors from the weight of representation. I never wanted them to feel they had to carry history alone. My job as a director was to create a space where they could be truthful, grounded, and present, not monumental. When that balance works, the audience doesn’t see “icons” on screen; they see people making choices inside history.

In many ways, the cast became co-custodians of the story. Their belief in the project, and the seriousness with which they approached these roles, reinforced my sense that HERO was not just a film, it was part of a longer cultural conversation, one that they are now very much a part of carrying forward.

Caribbean films have faced a recorded difficulty in the financing, making and distributing of films focuses on our society and based on the lives of our icons. What are some difficulties you faced in making “Hero” and what would be your advice for aspiring West Indian filmmakers looking to make their debut feature? 

The difficulties were constant and structural. For most of the time I was making HERO, there was simply no appetite for a film like this. A Caribbean story that wasn’t framed through slavery, crime, or suffering; a Black man presented as a global intellectual, strategist, and architect of history; a narrative that moved between the Caribbean, Britain, and Africa, that did not fit the funding templates that exist for us. So the first difficulty was that people didn’t even recognise the story as valid.

Financing became a process of patchwork and persistence. There was no single pot of money. We raised small amounts from Trinidad and Tobago, small amounts from Canada, bits here and there, and the rest was sweat equity. People worked because they believed. We shot across four continents, not because it was easy, but because the story demanded it. And when you work that way, everything takes longer, years longer.

Distribution was similar. For a long time, the response was silence or polite rejection. “It’s not a story.” “We don’t know how to place it.” Only later, when the global conversation shifted, did the same project suddenly become “timely.” That tells you a lot about how power works in this industry.

So my advice to aspiring West Indian filmmakers is very honest, and very practical.

First: know exactly why you are telling the story. If your reason isn’t strong, the process will break you. This is not a short game. It is a long, sometimes brutal one.

Second: do not wait for permission. The systems were not designed with us in mind, and waiting for validation can mean never starting. Use what you have, small budgets, digital tools, community support, and be rigorous about your craft.

Third: protect your integrity. Honour your collaborators. If you promise someone something, keep that promise, even if it’s modest. Trust is currency when money is scarce.

Fourth: understand the terrain. Romanticising filmmaking is dangerous. Learn about contracts, funding structures, co-productions, and distribution. This knowledge will save you from burnout and exploitation.

And finally: think beyond yourself. One of the shifts that has happened for me is that I no longer measure success only by personal achievement. I’m interested in building pathways, festivals, incubators, forums, so that the next generation doesn’t have to start from zero every time.

Your father, Patrick Solomon himself played a critical role in the project of Trinidad and Tobago’s independence from Britain. So, we have to ask, when you look at what's happening now with many countries in the Global South, actively cutting ties with [neo]colonialism--essentially repeating/continuing the work of your father, Ulric and others in the film, does that fuel any desire to make more of these films?

Very much so, but not in a nostalgic way.

When I look at what’s happening now across the Global South, I don’t see repetition as much as continuation. The work that my father, Ulric, Padmore, Nkrumah and so many others were engaged in was never meant to be a single historical moment that neatly concluded.

Growing up, independence was not abstract for me. It was lived. I knew that my grandfather had travelled to England to negotiate Trinidad and Tobago’s independence. I grew up around people who believed, genuinely believed, that we could shape our own destinies. That sense of possibility was very real. But I also grew up seeing how fragile those gains were, and how quickly economic control, political pressure, and cultural dominance could be reasserted in new forms.

So when I see countries now questioning neo-colonial relationships, rejecting extractive systems, and asserting cultural and political autonomy, it doesn’t surprise me. It resonates. It tells me that those earlier struggles mattered, even if they were silenced or distorted in the historical record.

Does that fuel a desire to make more of these films? Absolutely, but with intention. I’m not interested in heroic nostalgia or recycling myths. I’m interested in interrogating how power works, how resistance evolves, and what survival actually looks like over generations. I’m interested in stories that show both the courage and the cost of standing up, and the consequences of not doing so.

What has changed for me is that I now see these films less as isolated works, and more as part of a larger ecosystem of storytelling. Films, forums, mentorship, archives, all of it is connected. If we don’t tell these stories ourselves, they will either be erased or misrepresented, and future generations will be forced to start again without a map.

So yes, the present moment absolutely reinforces my commitment. Not because I feel we are reliving the past, but because it reminds me that history is alive, and that storytelling remains one of the most powerful tools we have to understand where we are, how we got here, and what might still be possible.

Any projects currently in the works that you can share news about? 

Yes, Garvey’s Ghost. What I wanted to explore with this project is how Garvey’s philosophy actually lived in everyday spaces, boarding houses, kitchens, community meetings, especially in the diaspora. At its heart, Garvey’s Ghost is a comedy series, but it’s grounded in very serious ideas. It also continues something that matters deeply to me: centring women. Miss Violet (Head of the UNIA) is not a side character; she is the spine of the series. Like so many women in our movements, she does the organising, the nurturing, the arguing, the holding-together of community, even while history often forgets her.

So yes, this project is very much in conversation with HERO, but it’s lighter on its feet, more playful, and more intimate.

Film reviewed by Sherez Jackson, a member of Tenement Yaad Media.