1993
2 h 4 m

1993
2 h 4 m

Summary Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano) is a Black American fashion model on a photo shoot in Cape Coast, Ghana. Through Mr. Gerima’s imaginative storytelling, she undergoes a journey back in time to a plantation in North America. There she becomes Shola, an enslaved African woman who labors in the master’s house and experiences the horrors of slaver...

Drama

Directed By: Haile Gerima

Written By: Haile Gerima

1993
2 h 4 m

1993
2 h 4 m

Sankofa

Metascore Universal Acclaim Based on 9 Critic Reviews

User Score Available after 4 ratings

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Where to Watch

Drama

Directed By: Haile Gerima

Written By: Haile Gerima

Where to Watch

Critic Reviews

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Metascore

Universal Acclaim Based on 9 Critic Reviews

100% Positive
9 Reviews

0% Mixed
0 Reviews

0% Negative
0 Reviews

All Reviews
Positive Reviews
Mixed Reviews
Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

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Metascore

Universal Acclaim Based on 9 Critic Reviews

100% Positive
9 Reviews

0% Mixed
0 Reviews

0% Negative
0 Reviews

All Reviews
Positive Reviews
Mixed Reviews
Negative Reviews

100

The New Yorker

With this intricate web of personal and family connections, and the brave maneuvering in the face of the overseers’ commands, Gerima is doing nothing less than reconstituting and affirming the full humanity of the enslaved.

By Richard Brody FULL REVIEW

100

Los Angeles Times

Sankofa unfolds as a kind of oratorio--the film’s music in itself is incredibly rich and intoxicating--in which people deal with terrible cruelty through ritual and incantations of the African gods. It is a celebration of the strength of black people, in drawing upon their spiritual roots, to defy their oppressors--past and present alike.

By Kevin Thomas FULL REVIEW

100

Original-Cin

The focus of [Germina's] story is rebellion and liberation and treating his story as a sombre fable of a soul’s journey through time, he turns the luridly familiar to something poetic and tragic.

By Liam Lacey FULL REVIEW

100

RogerEbert.com

Gerima’s Sankofa is an invocation not just to African ancestors, but also the present-day viewer. It calls to attention how history exists in the present, how the spirits of the long-gone can still affect today.

By Robert Daniels FULL REVIEW

TV Guide Magazine

Sankofa succeeds, on both a personal and a political level, because of the immediacy with which it conveys human suffering.

FULL REVIEW

Movie Nation

It’s a poetic, mystical and meandering immersion in the life-as-a-slave experience, both for the viewer and for our on-screen surrogate.

By Roger Moore FULL REVIEW

Time Out

While there's no doubting the sincerity of writer/director Gerima's film, one can't help sensing more than a little déjà vu in his account of the manifest evils of slavery.

By Geoff Andrew FULL REVIEW

See All 9 Critic Reviews

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Production Company Channel Four Films, Diproci, Ghana National Commission on Culture, Mypheduh Films, Negod-Gwad Productions, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR)

Release Date May 28, 1993

Duration 2 h 4 m

Genres

Drama

Tagline One must return to the past in order to move forward

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Awards

Berlin International Film Festival

• 1 Nomination

Where to Watch

Where to Watch

Top Cast

Kofi Ghanaba

Sankofa

Oyafunmike Ogunlano

Mona

Alexandra Duah

Nunu

Nick Medley

Joe

Mutabaruka

Shango

Afemo Omilami

Noble Ali

Reggie Carter

Father Raphael

Mzuri

Lucy

Jimmy Lee Savage

Mussa

Hasinatu Camara

Jumma

Jim Faircloth

James

Stanley Michelson

Mr. Lafayette

John A. Mason

Big Boy

Louise Reid

Esther

Roger Doctor

Nathan

Alditz McKenzie

Kuta

Chrispan Rigby

Photographer

Maxwell Parris

Baby Ngozi

Hossana Ghanaba

Linguist for Sankofa

Critic Reviews

Critic Reviews

Critic Reviews

Critic Reviews

User Reviews

User Reviews

Details

Details

Awards

Awards

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