Azali

Very interesting movie about the difficult life of a 14-year old girl in Ghana. The storyline might be a little foreseeable and the plot twist at the end is a little too much, but that's not what it's really about. This movie gives you an insight on hard living conditions in Ghana and the reality of a lot of people, especially women, without dramatizing too much. Instead, it puts an emphasis on the day-to-day life and willingness/necessity to fight for survival, which is very well played by the main actress. A immersion in another world which makes you reflect about inequalities as well as violence against women and children. I definitely recommend this movie.

Hmm, where do I start! I just wanted to come here and say what a fine piece of writing this thing was but even more the way it all tied together visually and the character development with sparse dialogue at times touched me deeply! and the flashback thing with the voice-over flashback to compel the "wastrel" son to do his brotherly duty! I loved it! The moments when the protagonist goes dead pan into the camera is deeply moving and quite affecting! But the best for me, is the magnificent ending and how all the threads are tied perfectly and we are left with a resounding piece of magnificent art; we must commend everyone who chipped in this project! The people who created this masterpiece should be very very proud of themselves, I watch a lot of cool stuff on Netflix but this one, this one should be canonized for a lot of reasons but for me, this one not only did its job and entertained with seminal style but expatiated on the human conditions that transcends on a universal scale.

The beginning 20-30 minutes got me very interested in the story, but then it lags so badly and for so long that I no longer cared what was going to happen. There are stretches up to 10 minutes where there is little or absolutely no dialogue AND nothing happening. It is just panning the area they are in and while it is beautiful scenery and people are going about their daily lives in the market, I don't understand the point of how lengthy these segments were. I think the film could have benefited from a better editor. With all that said, the lead actress did a pretty good job working with a bad script. The message is lost in the confusing mess that is the final film.