Film: The Burial of Kojo
Year: 2018
Country: Ghana
Director: Blitz Bazawule
Genre: Drama / Magical Realism
Language: English and Akan
Review: Panafrican.email
There are films that tell a story, and then there are films that create a world.
The Burial of Kojo belongs to the second category.
Blitz Bazawule’s 2018 Ghanaian film is an intimate story about family, betrayal, memory and forgiveness, but beneath its dreamlike surface lies another story—one about Ghana’s relationship with gold and the landscapes created by the search for it.
At the center of the film is Kojo, a man whose life is violently altered when his brother, Kwabena, abandons him in an abandoned mine shaft. Trapped underground and facing death, Kojo’s story unfolds through the eyes and imagination of his daughter, Esi.
What follows is not simply a rescue story.
It is a journey through memory.
A father trapped beneath the earth
The film’s central image is brutally simple: a man trapped underground.
But Bazawule transforms that physical imprisonment into something much larger.
Kojo is not merely trapped inside a mine. He is trapped inside the consequences of a broken relationship with his brother, the weight of family history and the unresolved wounds of his past.
The mine therefore becomes more than a location.
It becomes a metaphor.
Ghana is internationally associated with gold, and gold has shaped economies, communities and political histories across the country. In The Burial of Kojo, the mine becomes a dark space where the consequences of human ambition and betrayal are exposed.
Above ground is the world of family, memory and childhood.
Below ground is darkness.
Between the two is Esi.
Esi’s journey
The film is narrated through Esi, Kojo’s young daughter.
That choice fundamentally changes the way the story is experienced.
Instead of presenting the events as a conventional thriller, Bazawule allows the audience to see the world through a child’s imagination.
Esi’s journey becomes part fairy tale, part dream and part spiritual quest.
She is trying to understand her father, but she is also trying to understand the world that has produced his suffering.
Her journey toward the mine is therefore both physical and emotional.
She is searching for Kojo, but she is also searching for the truth about her family.
The mine as metaphor
Mining is rarely portrayed simply in African cinema.
Gold can represent wealth, opportunity and national development, but it can also represent exploitation, environmental destruction, inequality and conflict.
The Burial of Kojo doesn’t turn into a conventional mining-industry exposé. Instead, it uses the mine symbolically.
Kojo’s imprisonment underground evokes the darker side of the gold economy: the dangerous spaces created when people pursue wealth beneath the earth.
The mine becomes a place where human relationships are stripped down to their most basic elements.
There is no escape.
There is no society to hide behind.
There is only Kojo, his memories and the consequences of what happened between two brothers.
A Ghanaian visual language
One of the film’s greatest strengths is its visual identity.
Bazawule creates images that frequently feel closer to paintings than conventional film frames.
The Ghanaian landscape becomes dreamlike. Water, sky, vegetation, roads and buildings are transformed into elements of a larger visual mythology.
This is particularly important because The Burial of Kojo doesn’t attempt to imitate Hollywood’s visual language.
It creates its own.
The film feels Ghanaian not simply because it was shot in Ghana, but because its storytelling allows African memory, spirituality, family structures and landscape to shape the cinematic experience.
Family, masculinity and rivalry
At its heart, however, this is a story about two brothers.
Kojo and Kwabena represent different responses to life, ambition and failure.
Their conflict gradually becomes destructive.
The mine is ultimately the physical expression of that conflict.
Kwabena’s decision to abandon his brother is shocking, but the film spends considerable time examining the emotional history behind the betrayal.
That makes the story more complicated than a simple battle between good and evil.
The real tragedy is that the brothers once belonged to the same family.
The supernatural and the real
One of the most fascinating aspects of The Burial of Kojo is the way it refuses to draw a hard line between reality and the supernatural.
Dreams can feel as real as memories.
Memories can feel like ghosts.
Spiritual imagery exists alongside ordinary Ghanaian life.
This is not supernatural storytelling simply for the sake of creating mystery.
It reflects a worldview in which the boundaries between the living, the dead, memory and nature can be much more fluid.
Esi’s perspective allows the film to move naturally between these worlds.
A story about Ghana beyond the postcard
There is another reason the film deserves attention.
Ghanaian cinema is often discussed internationally through a limited collection of images: beaches, Accra nightlife, political history, traditional culture and economic development.
The Burial of Kojo offers something different.
It presents Ghana as a place of psychological depth and mythology.
Its Ghana is simultaneously modern and ancient, urban and rural, rational and spiritual.
The result is a film that feels deeply local while remaining universal.
Why the film matters to African cinema
The Burial of Kojo demonstrates that African filmmakers don’t need to choose between local storytelling and international cinematic ambition.
The film’s story is specifically Ghanaian.
Its emotions are universal.
A daughter trying to save her father.
A family destroyed by resentment.
A brother consumed by rivalry.
A man confronting mortality.
A child attempting to understand the complicated world of adults.
These are universal themes, but Bazawule tells them through a distinctly Ghanaian visual and cultural imagination.
Our verdict
Panafrican.email rating: ★★★★½ / 5
The Burial of Kojo is beautiful, haunting and emotionally demanding.
It isn’t a conventional mining movie, and viewers expecting an action film about gold mining may be surprised.
Instead, the mine is used as a powerful metaphor for betrayal, mortality and the buried histories that families carry.
The film’s greatest achievement is its ability to make a deeply personal story feel mythological.
Kojo is trapped beneath the earth.
Esi is trying to bring him home.
And somewhere between those two realities, the film asks a larger question:
What happens when the things we bury refuse to stay buried?
Where to start
If you are interested in African cinema, Ghanaian filmmaking, magical realism, stories about family, or films exploring the cultural meaning of gold and mining, The Burial of Kojo deserves a place on your watchlist.
For Panafrican.email readers interested in Africa’s mineral economy, the film also offers an intriguing companion piece to the harder data and intelligence surrounding Ghana’s gold industry.
Watch the film. Then look at the landscape around it.
Sometimes the most important stories about Africa’s resources are not found in a geological database.
Sometimes they are buried inside the stories people tell about themselves.
Panafrican.email Film Desk
African Cinema • Culture • Mining • History • Intelligence
Leave a Reply