Educational Media Reviews Online

Hero With a Thousand Faces focuses on the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone mainly through the eyes of Carrie Jo Cain. Carrie Jo is a registered nurse working as an infection control specialist for World Hope International. She is living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her family, but spent a significant part of her childhood in Sierra Leone and is still closely connected with the country. The Ebola crisis creates a personal predicament for Carrie Jo and her family when it becomes clear that her skills and familiarity with the country would be a significant help, but her family struggles with her absence. The film does a good job documenting the cost to Carrie Jo’s family of her participation in the relief effort. 

A too brief history of Sierra Leone leaves the viewer wondering about the situation in the country when the Ebola epidemic strikes and the response is obviously inadequate. The film allows the voices of multiple people and organizations to be heard, including government officials from Sierra Leone and other world governments, healthcare workers, affected families in Sierra Leone, relief organization personnel, and Ebola survivors. All agree that the response to the Ebola crisis was slow and inadequate worldwide. The film blames political failure for the spread of the disease throughout West Africa. Lack of resources and a poor sanitation infrastructure significantly worsened the problem. Ritual burial practices and local customs are noted as contributing factors to the spread of the disease. 

Education is emphasized as the long-term answer to problems in Sierra Leone. The film ends positively by noting that the Ebola fighters were selected as Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year for 2014 and that Sierra Leone was certified Ebola free by the United Nations in 2015. 

The film does a good job of documenting the myriad of problems faced by healthcare workers and relief workers in combating Ebola in Sierra Leone and attempting to prevent its spread. Although there is significant blame placed on the rest of the world little effort is made in the film to discuss the failures in Sierra Leone that resulted in the need for widespread assistance from the world. The lack of transparency by the Sierra Leone government in the beginning of the crisis and the reasons for the slow response from the rest of the world are not discussed. Another significant negative for this film is the use of seemingly random quotations which frequently disrupt the flow of the film and contribute nothing to the storyline. 

Because of the significant amount of media coverage, the Ebola crisis, and the selection of the Ebola fighters by Time, this film adds a number of significant voices to the discussion. It does a good job of documenting the internal disorder and the milieu which contributed to the spread of Ebola throughout West Africa. As previously noted, the lack of discussion about the internal political situation and history of Sierra Leone that allowed the Ebola crisis to escalate throughout West Africa is sadly lacking. The quotations are a significant distraction from what would otherwise be an engaging film. An overall rating of recommended is the final result. 

This film will be significant for many years, despite the time limited Ebola crisis. Many audiences will benefit from seeing this film including junior high through college classrooms, individuals interested in careers in healthcare and relief work, discussion groups in many different settings such as church groups, relief organizations, political organizations, and the general public. Hero With a Thousand Faces is readily available as a downloadable video from many sites at reasonable prices, but care must be taken to avoid confusing this film with a book of the same name by Joseph Campbell (2008) which has nothing to do with the Ebola crisis.