ARRAY Releasing has partnered with celebrated Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima for a 4K restoration of his groundbreaking 1993 film, SANKOFA. The transformative film about the untold history of Black resistance, developed from 20 years of research into the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved African people, will be re-released by ARRAY on September 24, 2021 in the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand on Netflix. The announcement was made today by Tilane Jones, President of ARRAY, the Peabody Award-winning arts and social impact collective founded a decade ago by filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
“Mr. and Mrs. Gerima are trailblazers of independent filmmaking and grassroots distribution in the Black cinematic diaspora,” said President of ARRAY, Tilane Jones. “ARRAY Releasing is abundantly honored and proud to have been selected by The Gerimas to introduce their landmark film to new audiences with a remastered re-release of the masterpiece, SANKOFA.”
“We are honored to be a part of Ava’s courageous vision to be human in an industry that has tortured the image and psychology of people of color for so long,” said The Gerimas.
SANKOFA follows Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano), a Black American fashion model on a photo shoot in Cape Coast, Ghana. Through Mr. Gerima’s imaginative storytelling, she undergoes a journey back in time to a plantation in North America. There she becomes Shola, an enslaved African woman who labors in the master’s house and experiences the horrors of slavery firsthand. In becoming Shola, Mona recovers and confronts her ancestral identity and experience. While enduring monstrous trauma at the hands of white men who owned people for profit, Shola’s interactions with her fellow enslaved Africans are rich with humanity, respect and dignity for one another. Most notably, she connects with Shango (Mutabaruka), a rebellious African man who toils in the fields, and Nunu (Alexandra Duah), one of the few of the enslaved to remember her life in Africa before being stolen and terrorized by European traders.
