BEASTS OF NO NATION is based on the novel by Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala, bringing to life the gripping tale of Agu, a child soldier torn from his family to fight in the civil war of an African country. Directed by Emmy Award winner Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), the film stars Idris Elba as Commandant, a warlord who takes in Agu and instructs him in the ways of war.

BEASTS OF NO NATION hits Netflix and limited theaters on October 16, 2015.

Fukunaga’s stories from the shoot sound like a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Huckleberry Finn. He says that on the Saturday before he was scheduled to start, he felt worn down. By Sunday, he was so exhausted he stayed in bed, and a doctor diagnosed him with stage-two malaria. “It’s like someone gave you a sleeping pill, along with a pounding headache and a hot-and-cold fever,” Fukunaga says. “My entire body ached. My kidneys were aching.” The production had to push back a week as the director recovered.

But getting malaria was only the first in a series of disasters for “Beasts.” The camera operator pulled his hamstring on the first day, which meant Fukunaga had to fill in on that job, in addition to his roles as director and cinematographer, using a Steadicam strapped to his back. Some of the extras playing the tribal guards were jailed in the Ivory Coast on suspicion of being mercenaries, and had to be sent money for food and clothes. Actors wouldn’t show up for work because they lost interest, forcing Fukunaga to crank out morning rewrites. The cast was terrified of poisonous snakes, and the director — who travelled through the jungle with a machete and a stick — nearly stepped on a black mamba that could have killed him.

The film ballooned $1 million over budget, and Fukunaga found himself struggling to keep it together. “Every day, it felt like we were on a sinking ship,” he says. “I thought, this is going to be ‘Lost in La Mancha.’ We were shooting in rainy season. Sets were washing away.” Fukunaga shed 20 pounds from his 180-pound frame. Because he didn’t trust the local meat — “In Africa, you see chickens and pigs eating garbage,” he says — his diet frequently consisted of a salad of onions, cucumbers and avocado. “I just found out last week I’d been carrying a parasite for the last year, so that was probably part of the weight loss,” Fukunaga says. “I’m on a whole cocktail of antibiotics now.”

The director returned home in July 2014 more exhausted than ever. “For months, I had dreams we were trying to shoot, and things weren’t happening,” he recalls. “People would have conversations with me, and I would sound drunk in the dream, because I couldn’t put my words together, I was so tired.” As he started to slowly cobble together an edit, he was fully aware that he had never finished shooting all the scenes he needed, and would have to close some gaps with voiceover. Meanwhile, his investors were concerned they’d never get a dime back.