Set in a continent plagued by problems and challenges, director Zoe Martinson’s colorful, postcard-like indie film The Fisherman tells the story of a literal fish out of water, and the comedy of magical realism represents the courageous leap she feels African cinema needs.
As a panelist on JBX Talks at the 8th Joburg Film Festival in South Africa this week, Martinson will unravel his journey as part of the next generation of African storytellers shaping the future of African cinema.
She told Variety that the continent’s new filmmakers need to be bold, creative and undaunted in the beautiful and entertaining stories they want to tell from this vast continent and bring them to audiences around the world.
For The Fisherman, which he wrote and directed as an independent film, Martinson first produced eight short films and then teamed up with Kofi Owusu-Afriyeh and Corey Jackson to present this quirky feature as a vibrant depiction of Ghanaian culture filled with laughter, African joy, and a colorful visual style.
Shot over 20 days with the help of the Ghanaian Navy, who appear as fishermen, the feature grew out of Martinson’s short film, which was made in response to efforts to clear the Jamestown fishing community for a new port.
This comedic story tells the story of Ata Oko Sakki, an elderly traditional Ghanaian fisherman played by Ricky Adidare, who is unexpectedly forced into retirement, but whose life is forever changed by a talking fish.
Together with two orphans and a strong-willed young woman, the four embark on a journey from their fishing village to Accra, the capital of Ghana, to buy their own fishing boat.
Told through a vivid lens, The Fisherman’s stories highlight the struggle to maintain traditional fishing in the face of rapid urban development and commercial ports, using the magical realism of talking fish to humorously dramatize real-world issues such as displacement and environmental degradation.
In “The Fisherman,” Martinson, who lived in Keta, a fishing town in Ghana’s Volta region, wanted to tell a story of change in Africa.
“The Fisherman is a whimsical story about a traditional fisherman who acquires a talking fish who helps him cope with change. It’s a human story,” she says.
She admits the process was tough.
“It was self-funded. I think ignorance is bliss. We were brave because it was the first feature we had made. We had to go into a lab in Venice just to take notes and then go write the script. We pitched it in Venice and ended up getting a production grant from the Italian government, but there was a restriction that we couldn’t top it up with the grant.”
“We ended up making a movie on a pretty low budget, but we just made it work. Everybody pitched in, and of course we paid everybody, and that’s how we got it done.”
“I think the difficult part of making an independent film may not be the actual production, because we all kind of know how to make it because we’ve been trained and made our careers in that,” she explains.
“It was about bringing it out, like, how do we distribute it? That was the biggest learning curve we had to go through. We thought, Okay, we’ve made this movie, but now how are we going to get people to see it? We had no idea about that process.”
But Martinson says African filmmakers need to persevere and keep knocking on doors, even without distribution.
“Don’t give up. Just be brave and keep knocking on doors if you think you have a good idea. Just start. I made eight short films before making a feature, and I think that journey was very important.”
“It’s inexpensive, it’s low risk, you can connect with the crew, you can learn about yourself as a storyteller, you can make mistakes, and it’s a safe space. You learn as you go through everything, and when you get to a feature film, for my team, it didn’t feel that difficult because we’ve done a lot of shorts together.”
“With ‘The Fisherman,’ we felt like we were ready to make it. Then the next learning curve was, ‘Okay, how do we take a feature and sell that feature?’ And putting that out into the world is different from a short film. So keep pushing and keep learning. I would tell everyone to start with shorts. Even if you make it, just make it knowing you’ll probably just put it on YouTube. Just start making things and you’ll learn. ”
When it comes to capturing Ghana’s vibrant colors and sounds, Martinson says we need to open the aperture wider to see more of Africa’s joy, beauty and laughter.
“I always thought Ghana was so beautiful. I always say I don’t see the struggles. I don’t see the hardships. I lived in a very rural village, so we didn’t always have running water or electricity, but I still laughed every day.”
“I found so much joy in a community with so few things. There’s something really beautiful about this culture’s ability to find love and lean into values based on humanity rather than materialism.”
“Ghanaians are very funny people, and I felt like that’s something that’s sometimes captured in local films, but doesn’t really show up in the rest of the world. So I wanted to keep the comedy in tone for ‘The Fisherman.’
Martinson said, “While this film speaks to larger things and issues, I just want people to see Ghana’s sense of humor shine through its wit, irony, and joy.”
“Cinematically, I come from a photography background. I knew I didn’t have a lot of money for lighting, so I wanted to shoot this film and make it as beautiful as possible. I knew it was going to look incredibly beautiful and colorful and purposeful, so I did a lot of preparation to make it look like that.”
She said “The Fisherman” is part of the African filmmaking movement and presents a different type of story from the African continent.
“This is part of providing a different voice in the canon of African cinema that is brighter, funnier and where people are actually looking at themselves.”
