Sankofa

The film starts off with an elderly Divine Drummer, Sankofa (played by Kofi Ghanaba), beating on African drums chanting the phrase, "Lingering spirit of the dead, rise up". This is his form of communication with the ancestors of the African land. He believes that his drumming is essential in bringing the spirit of his ancestors who were killed in the African diaspora back home.<ref name=":0" /> The story then goes on to show Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano), a contemporary African-American Model (person) on a film shoot in Ghana. She has a session at Cape Coast Castle, which she does not know was historically used for the Atlantic slave trade<ref name="Kandé">[https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820726 Sylvie Kandé and Joe Karaganis, "Look Homeward, Angel: Maroons and Mulattoes in Haile Gerima's "Sankofa", ''Research in African Literatures''], 29 (Summer, 1998), pp. 128-146</ref> because she has been disconnected from her African roots for so long. While Mona is on the beach modeling, she encounters the mysterious old man, Sankofa, who was beating on the drums at the beginning of the film. Sankofa persistently reminds Mona to return to her past and is very belligerent when it comes to keeping the place of his ancestors’ sacred, so he attempts to kick white tourists out of the slave castle.<ref name=":1"></ref> When Mona decides to go take a look inside the castle herself, she gets trapped inside and enters a sort of trance in which she is surrounded by chained slaves who appear to have risen from the dead. Mona attempts to run out of the slave castle and is met by white slave masters who she tries to reason with by claiming she of American descent and not of African descent. The slave masters pay no attention to Mona’s claim and push her to a fire, strip off her clothing and put a hot iron on her back.