Ama

This sets out to explore the themes and aesthetics of African cinema and traditional Akan story-telling in the context of contemporary Britain. Babs Ababio (Baptiste) is a middle-aged Ghanaian living in a London suburb with his wife, boxer son Joe, and 12-year-old daughter Ama (Ackerman). On a visit to the countryside, Ama has a spiritual experience, from which she brings away a golden floppy disc. She learns its contents at the office cleaned by her mother. It's a double warning from her ancestors: Babs will die unless he returns to his homeland, Joe will be paralysed if he boxes again. The women are shocked, the men too stubborn to listen... Ama is nothing less than an Afrocentric art film. Unfortunately, for all its ambition and the warmth of its playing, it works intermittently at best. Ploddingly shot and eccentrically scripted, it hits on a magical realism that is neither magical nor realistic.