The Fisherman: A Talking Fish, a Stubborn Old Man, and the Best Comedy Out of Ghana in Years
Zoey Martinson’s award-winning debut is screening through June at Unseen Nairobi. Don’t miss it.
Atta Oko Sackey has fished the same stretch of coast his whole life. Then he’s forced into retirement, hauls in a fish that talks back, and ends up on the road to Accra with three misfit friends and a dream of owning his own boat. That’s the film. It sounds ridiculous. It works.
Zoey Martinson’s debut made history as Ghana’s first official selection at the Venice International Film Festival and won UNESCO’s Fellini Medal, and it’s easy to see why festivals fell for it. The comedy is sharp and very Ghanaian. The fish is bougie, sarcastic, full of opinions, voiced with the kind of polished, imported accent the film has enormous fun with. The running joke about Locally Acquired Foreign Accents alone is worth the ticket. East African audiences will know exactly what’s being skewered. We have our own version.
Martinson came to film through theatre, and it shows in the best way. The dialogue snaps and crackles… Scenes are built around people talking, arguing, negotiating, performing for each other – buzzing. She shot the feature in 20 days, with members of Ghana’s navy appearing as fishermen, and the coastal sections have a texture that money can’t buy. The nets, the boats, the afternoon rhythm of a village pulling its catch in together. You can feel that she lived this. Martinson spent time in a fishing community in Ghana’s Volta region, and the film never treats that world as a backdrop. It’s the whole point.
Because under the laughter, this is a film about obsolescence. Martinson made an earlier short in response to the clearing of Jamestown’s fishing community for a new seaport, and that loss runs through everything here. Atta isn’t just losing a job. He’s losing the thing that made him who he is. The trawlers hoovering up the catch, the city that has no use for his skills, the daughter who has become someone he doesn’t recognise. None of it is preached. It’s all just there, under the jokes, which is exactly where social commentary belongs.
Ricky Adelayitar is the reason it holds. His Atta is proud, funny, wounded, impossible. He refuses to change because tradition is everything, and the film loves him for it even as it gently insists the world has moved on. Every family has one of these men. Ghanaian audiences apparently spent the premiere recognising their own uncles in him. You will too. The supporting cast of “Associates” gives the road trip its energy, each one odd in a specific, lived-in way rather than quirky for the sake of it.
In Ga, Pidgin and English, this is African storytelling that doesn’t NEED to explain itself to anyone, and it’s better for it. After Venice, it picked up the Ja’net Dubois Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and it has been winning over audiences from Accra to New York since. It also arrives with serious backing. Yvonne Orji, the Nigerian-American comedian and star of Insecure, came on board as executive producer, a vote of confidence in where African comedy is heading.
The Fisherman is screening through June at Unseen Nairobi. Tickets are available on Mookh. Go see it. Take your father!!
Film Details
The Fisherman (2024) Written and directed by Zoey Martinson Executive Producer: Yvonne Orji Starring Ricky Adelayitar, Endurance Dedzo, William Lamptey, Kiki-Romi, Adwoa Akoto, Dulo Harris Ghana | 105 minutes | Ga, Pidgin, English
Screening: Through June 2026 at Unseen Nairobi Tickets: Available on Mookh