The Flying Stars to celebrate Disability Day on the soccer pitch

The "stars" of my Sundance-supported documentary, The Flying Stars, will celebrate the UN's Disability Day on December 3 by doing what they do best: play soccer. The Freetown Flying Stars will challenge their Bo regional counterparts in a rematch of the game they played in the documentary.

All the players are amputees, whose legs and arms were hacked off by rebel soldiers or claimed by landmines, during the Sierra Leone civil war of 1991-2002.


The amputees were innocent children or teenagers at the time, and their attackers themselves were children, brainwashed by the rebel army to commit horrific deeds. At the end of the war, the amputees banded together to play the country's number-one sport in order to support each other, but also show their countrymen that they could "stand on their own feet." The amputees also play to cope with their PTSD.

"This football match is to showcase how peaceful and united we are," says the Freetown club's manager, Mohamed "Census" Jalloh who appears in the film. "We want to preach peace."

Census, as his teammates call him, asks for any donations to help cover the costs of transporting the players and renting the soccer field ("the pitch"). You can safely donate here by giving directly to the team or buying authentic Sierra Leonean wood carvings (above) or photographic portraits of the team by associate producer Fiona Aboud and the film's photographer, Johnny Vong. Similar items were auctioned off in a May 2016 fundraiser at the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto.

The Flying Stars documentary is currently playing in Canada on the CBC's Documentary Channel and on the streaming service, kweli TV in the U.S.

For more information about The Flying Stars team and documentary, please visit here.

LEONE STARS launches Kickstarter.com campaign

The LEONE STARS documentary team has launched a fundraising campaign at Kickstarter.com to raise $20,000 to shoot a film about the amputee soccer team of Sierra Leone. Donate anywhere from $5 and $5,000 and receive books, t-shirts, photos and CDs in return.

This project has attracted some of the top film, music and photography talents in Canada and the United States: K'NAAN who has contributed his song, "Fire in Freetown," to this trailer you see; Hot Docs board member WALTER FORSYTH who produced the viral hit How to Be Alone and the feature doc CUBERS; New York photographer FIONA ABOUD, and journalist/filmmaker ALLAN TONG.

For full details, please visit www.kickstarter.com.