Ama: An African Voyage of Discovery

African myth and legend are reawakened in a 1990s England of floppy discs and neon jackets in Kwesi Owusu and Nii Kwato Owoo’s restored 1991 cornerstone of diasporic Black independent cinema, now finally returning to the screen. “What north, Ma, Scotland?” ask the grown kids in a refreshingly loving Ghanaian English family, but a magical discovery (in the form of a floppy disc!) brings their African heritage to life, along with some worrisome prophecies. Idyllic English countrysides, confrontational English racists, and 1990s Black consciousness and liberation movements (“It’s back to Africa now, innit?”) merge in this fascinating transposition of traditional African magical realist storytelling to contemporary Britain.