Adanggaman

This beautifully filmed, but extremely painful examination of the African slave trade takes a difficult position: Rather than focusing on the white European superstructure, Ivory Coast director Roger Gnoan M'bala focuses on African complicity in the capture and selling of African people. Tragically, the circumstances of this brave film are rooted in well-documented fact; the story, however, set in 17th-century West Africa, is fictional. Hardheaded Ossei (Ziable Honore Goore Bi) refuses to bow to the wishes of his noble father, N'Go, and marry the bride who's been chosen for him; he'd rather marry his girlfriend, a "slave" of "low" birth. Beaten for his disobedience, ...