White people only show up for about seven seconds in Beasts of No Nation. Agu (Abraham Attah), a West African child solider, is trudging down a road with the rest of the Commandant’s (Idris Elba) “battalion” of heavily armed adolescents when a UN convoy passes by, going the other direction. A photog in a bulletproof Land Rover snaps pictures, while a woman in the back seat looks on in horror. And then they’re gone. In another film, we’d be following those well-meaning aid workers, but here, we never see them again. Beasts of No Nation never looks away from Agu. This is his story.
The efficient dismantling of sentiment and structure is a trademark of writer/director/cinematographer Cary Fukunaga, who’s best known for helming the first season of True Detective.