Saint Pauly

Like a PSA: low budget compared to Western standards but speaks out on an important subject. Amina is a 14-year-old child from Ghana, who's unwittingly sold into slavery by a mother who lives her daughter too much to make her be the fourth wife of a man her grandfather's age. The film contains all the tropes of well meaning proselytizers with its heavy handed dialog, stilted scenes and amateurish directing, yet the realities buried within about sexual slavery, human trafficking, and child prostitution in Ghana make this film a necessary one, though not necessarily ready to watch.

bfchris

The story line is excellent. This low-budget film could have been improved by editing to shorten the silent passages where performers lacked the scripted lines to express themselves, and where the editor lingered at the end of a conversation unnecessarily. Ghanaians are excellent storytellers; the director could have explained the story to the actors, and then given them the freedom to improvise their lines. Instead of haltingly attempting to remember exact wording from a script, the actors would then have smoothly delivered what they needed to say at that point in the story. For the most part, emotions were appropriately displayed. The musical soundtrack is excellent, but is monaural. I listened with Ozone Imager turning it into stereo, and thoroughly enjoyed the passionate music and singing.