Ghana Dominates 2019 AMAAs With ‘The Burial Of Kojo’, ‘Vagabonds’, Others

Nominations for the 2019 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) are out, and Ghana seems to have rejuvenated its past glory of dominating the nominations.

Five Ghanaian films secured various nominations for the award ceremony later this year. Among them are ‘The Burial of Kojo’, ‘Azali’, ‘The Fisherman’, ‘Before The Vows’ and ‘Vagabonds’.

‘Vagabonds’, a story of two orphaned brothers — 10-year-old Owusu and five- year-old Gyasi, who feel trapped in their orphanage — and ‘The Fisherman’ are short films, while the rest are feature films.

‘The Burial of Kojo’ secured 10 nominations in categories like best achievement in production design, best achievement in make-up, best achievement in visual effects, best achievement in sound, best achievement in cinematography and best achievement in editing.

Young actress Cynthia Dankwa who played Esi in ‘The Burial of Kojo’ also got nomination for best young/promising actor for the AMAA 2019.

Joseph Otsiman and Kobina Amissah-Sam, who also played Kojo and Kwabina in the ‘The Burial of Kojo’ respectively, have also got the nod for best actor in a leading role and best actor in a supporting role in that order.

The film’s director Blitz Bazawule is also up for best director-first feature film category.

The film, which is co-produced by Ama K. Abebrese and Kwaku Obeng Boateng, has become one of the films that is projecting Ghana internationally.

The film was an official selection of the 2019 Pan-African Film Festival and the 2018 Urbanworld Film Festival Best Narrative Feature winner. It was also selected for Luxor Film Festival in Egypt, where it won Grand Nile Prize for Best Long Narrative (the Golden Mask of Tutankhamen). It was later released on Netflix to join the list of international films on that platform.

‘The Burial of Kojo’ is the story of a young girl named Esi (Cynthia Dankwa), who lives with her mother, Ama (Mamley Djangmah), and her father, Kojo (Joseph Otsiman), in a wondrous but poor part of Ghana—a village of small houses built on struts in a lake and connected to the shore by narrow, slatted walkways. Esi tells her story—narrated in voice-over by her grown-up self (played by Ama K. Abebrese)—with a tone of reminiscence that restores the perspective of her childhood. Together with the other four films, ‘The Burial of Kojo’ has made Ghana proud with the nominations.