Adanggaman

Plot

In West Africa in 1685, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighboring ethnic groups, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. Chasing after the soldiers in an effort to free her, Ossei is befriended by a fierce warrior named Naka.

At Adanggaman's court, Ossei makes friends with a healer/seer, who was captured as a boy from his village/people by Adanggaman's empire. He heals some wounds that Ossei gained when travelling to Adanggaman, and reveals through his fortune-telling abilities that the future of all in the empire would be bleak for a long time, subject to slavery and oppression. The healer sees his daughter at the court (Naka), who doesn't acknowledge him initially, but recalls her childhood with him guiding her as his only daughter. The seer protests to King Adanngaman, who in turn for his perceived insolence, orders him and Ossei to be sold as slaves. The healer dies whilst in captivity, overcome by disbelief, grief and abandonment.

In the end, Ossei leaves Naka, after the two escape, become close friends, and form a household. He goes travelling, to forge a new life, but is captured by soldiers of Adangamaan's court and thus prepped for sale into slavery. He is sold to Europeans, who transport him to the Americas via the Middle Passage, and is renamed John Stanford by a wealthy plantation owner. He dies at age 70, having five children with a slave woman. King Adangaaman, ultimately and ironically, is captured by his aides whilst drunk from rum, and in turn sold to Europeans. He becomes a slave in St. Louis, and is a cook to Europeans there, being given the name Walter Brown. He dies in 1698 from tuberculosis, in perhaps an ironic and poignant fall from grace.

Cast

Awards

In 2000, Andanggaman won the Best Actor and Special Jury Award at the Amiens International Film Festival. The following year it won the Special Jury Award at the Marrakech International Film Festival and the awards for Best Actress and Best Cinematography at the Ouagadougou Panafrican Film and Television Festival.