Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. was born to Ghanaian parents who raised him in southwest Houston. He proudly shared that he attended Kolter Elementary, Fondren Middle School, and Booker T. Washington High School, where he participated in magnet programs focused on languages, technology, and engineering.
"To be honest, I think that if I hadn't gone to those schools, I probably wouldn't have had the same rigor and drive that became pretty essential to navigating the field of independent filmmaking," Osei-Kuffour Jr. said. "These programs inspired me to travel outside of Texas, and my teachers gave me the foundation to have the confidence to live abroad."
Osei-Kuffour Jr. admitted he originally wanted to become a video game designer, hoping to one day work for Nintendo. However, his pursuit of that career pivoted him in a direction he didn't expect.
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He ended up earning an undergraduate degree in film studies from Stanford University while living in Kyoto, Japan, and then attending graduate school at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in Singapore for filmmaking.
"Part of the reason why I love video games is because I grew up playing Zelda and Mario. Those games had great interactive experiences, but they also really well-told stories," he recalled. I started to realize that the choices being made in my favorite video games were visual storytelling. In order to become the best storyteller possible, I had to become a really great filmmaker first."
His thesis film for NYU, Born With It, was based on a premise that he said was very personal to him. On his first day of school in a small Japanese town, a half-Japanese, half-black boy tries to prove to his new classmates that his dark skin is not a disease.
The film won several awards at film festivals around the world.
"Japanese cinema is often about characters who feel like they aren't good enough. It's about fitting in, belonging, and self-acceptance. The stories tend to come from a very deeply sensitive place," he said.
Osei-Kuffour Jr. emphasized that his journey after college wasn't linear but rather a "winding path." As a foreigner in Japan, he remembers how difficult it was to get jobs. To pay the bills, he ended up working on small micro-budget YouTube documentaries on the Japanese fashion industry.
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He then worked in animation for two years as a producer before realizing his true passion was in directing.
All of the time Osei-Kuffour Jr. spent working in Japan allowed him to become fluent in the language and familiar with its culture. He believes that his unique experiences helped him land the gig as the director for the 8th episode of FX's Shogun.
"I feel really blessed to have gotten this episode, because I feel like after living in Japan for so long, its culture is about reading in between the lines and reading the room. You have become sensitive to what is said or not said," he shared.
It's been nearly a year since Osei-Kuffour Jr. finished shooting the episode, but he currently has several other projects in the works. He's currently working on the Apple TV+ show "Before" and the HBO show "Welcome to Derry."
He rarely meets people in the film industry who share a similar cultural background and identity as him, but he never lets that turn him away from the profession. He encourages emerging filmmakers to always stay true to themselves, regardless of their environment.
"One thing that matters more than your skill is your point of view. What stories are you trying to tell, and what kind of authenticity can you lend to those stories? Every project I've worked on, I've been able to insert my specific life experience into it," he said.
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