The failure affected 11 cinemas on Thursday night, according to distributor Keta Frame, after their playback servers selected a festival cut instead of the version cleared for general release. The 14-minute ending shows captured soldiers from Teren refusing a return home and asking to remain under international supervision. By Friday morning, Teren had recalled its envoy from Accra, turning a row over a film into a diplomatic dispute.
The film, directed by Sebastian Głowacka, is a fictional drama about a prisoner exchange between two invented countries. Teren’s foreign ministry had objected to what it called a misleading portrayal of its soldiers, but the film opened in Ghana on 2 October after its makers made changes to the ending. The unapproved footage appeared on screens in Accra and Kumasi before cinema staff stopped the affected sessions.
The wrong cut reaches screens
Keta Frame said technicians traced the problem to a versioning error in a software update completed on Wednesday. The update caused some cinema servers to treat the festival cut as the release copy when they loaded the film’s playlist. The distributor said 18 screenings were affected, reaching about 2,300 ticket-holders; staff halted eight screenings partway through and offered refunds or replacement tickets.
“We had signed off on one ending, and that is the version audiences were meant to see,” Głowacka said in an interview in Accra. “The other cut was never cleared for public release.” She said the original ending had been made for an earlier festival screening and was not based on actual events. The director said she learned of the fault from a cinema manager during the first evening screenings.
Teren’s envoy, Alexa Escalante, left Accra on Friday after her government summoned her for consultations, the country’s foreign ministry said. Its public notice called the film “a grave distortion” and said the unexpected screening had made the dispute more serious. Ghana’s foreign ministry said it had received notice of the departure and was in contact with the Teren mission; it did not comment on the film’s content.
Cinemas halt the release
The film’s rollout had already been disrupted by Teren’s protest, which prompted two cinemas to delay screenings last week while seeking advice from their lawyers. Keta Frame says the changes to the public cut were made voluntarily, not under a court order. The production cost 3.8 million Ghanaian cedis (about €260,000), according to producer Erland Andersson, and had sold 18,600 tickets before Thursday’s fault.
Cinema operator Claus Henning said the affected venues had pulled the film until each server had been checked and the correct release file reinstalled. “People came to see the version advertised, and they should get that version,” he said. Keta Frame said the distributor would pay for an independent technical review by Monday and plans to resume screenings only after cinemas confirm the fix.
The Ghana Film Classification Board, which rates films for public exhibition, said the version it approved remains eligible for screening. It has asked Keta Frame to provide the festival cut and a technical account of how it reached cinema servers by 14 October. The board said its review concerns the release process, not whether Teren’s objections are justified. Głowacka said she would not withdraw the approved film.
