X
  • 1993
  • Mypheduh Films
  • 2 h 5 m
  • 1993
  • Mypheduh Films
  • 2 h 5 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...

  • 1993
  • Mypheduh Films
  • 2 h 5 m
  • 1993
  • Mypheduh Films
  • 2 h 5 m

Sankofa

Metascore Universal Acclaim Based on 9 Critic Reviews
93
User Score Mixed or Average Based on 4 User Ratings
4.8
My Score
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Where to Watch

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...

Where to Watch

Top Cast

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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Universal Acclaim Based on 9 Critic Reviews
93
100% Positive
9 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Universal Acclaim Based on 9 Critic Reviews
93
100% Positive
9 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
100
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
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
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
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
80
Sankofa succeeds, on both a personal and a political level, because of the immediacy with which it conveys human suffering.
FULL REVIEW
75
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
70
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

User Reviews

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User Score
Mixed or Average Based on 4 User Ratings
4.8
50% Positive
2 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
50% Negative
2 Ratings

User Reviews

 View All
User Score
Mixed or Average Based on 4 User Ratings
4.8
50% Positive
2 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
50% Negative
2 Ratings

There are no user reviews yet. Be the first to add a review.

Details

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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 5 m
Genres
Tagline One must return to the past in order to move forward
View All Details

Awards

Berlin International Film Festival
• 1 Nomination

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