I stumbled on this documentary at Aesthetica Short Film Festival, on the repeat screening of the Director’s Pick. The film is by far my favourite from the whole festival (it won the Best of Festival at the same event and in the making to be a feature film). I saw some experimental and documentary films the day before I saw this and I almost fell asleep in the middle but this one kept me engaged and gave me chills. I felt very pumped watching this.
Kofi and Lartey is a story about Agbogbloshie, a commercial district near the centre of Accra, Ghana. It’s well known as the biggest e-waste site on Earth. The director, Sasha Rainbow, gave a few words about the film:
“There has been much documentation of Agbogbloshie in recent years, but in most cases, it has come from a sensational perspective. I wanted to tell a human story from within the environment, a story that the audience could relate to and empathise with – a story of human strength within the harshest of environments, a real-life Wall-E. It was important for me to bring insight into what it is really like to live and work in such a toxic environment from an insider’s perspective.”
I tried to search for some information on the director herself, and it turned out that she began her career in the music industry, directing work for companies such as Universal, Sony, Mercury and Warner. That makes sense since I think her choices of music or sound on the film is one of the factors why her documentary is appealing. She also used footage of a rapper from Agbogbloshie as the closing scene of Kofi and Lartey. And parts of the short film is made into a music video for Placebo’s “Life’s What You Make It”.
Sasha worked with Abdallah, who’s on a mission to provide education for kids in Agbogbloshie. They also gave Kofi and Lartey the power to record their lives themselves to have candid output on how life really is there. I still remember one quote from the movie: how the scraps of metal that the workers tried to find to trade with money, probably in some years to come found their way back to Agbogbloshie. It’s like a nonstop cycle.
Going through her works, I found another similar pattern: her creations are empowering. Watching Kofi and Lartey, I feel empathy toward the people who live and suffered because of the toxic in Agbogbloshie but at the same time, the individuals seem powerful. Especially when they showed cuts of individuals in the middle. I got goosebumps.
The power of the cinematography in the film was also amazing. The DP of the project, Pau Castejón Úbeda, succeded on capturing the documentary and making it interesting to watch. I was totally captivated the whole movie I wished it last longer.
After the festival, I just realized that Sasha Rainbow has another documentary called Kamali, a story about a single mother’s fight for her daughter’s empowerment in India through skateboarding. They screened it on Sunday but unfortunately, I had to go back to London on Saturday night. Last night I found a link to watch the whole film and glad that I did.
The reason why I hooked so much on Kofi and Lartey is that in the future, I’d love to create documentaries about my own country. I wanted to create it like how Sasha Rainbow did for hers: absorbing and enticing. A piece of compelling harmony between narrative, visual, and sound. One that makes the audience not only aware of the issue but at least curious and wants to delve deeper about it.