There is a tug of war, a push and pull like the tide of an ocean, that exists at the centre of The Fisherman, the feature debut by Zoey Martinson. It swings between youth and elderhood, surrealism and reality, tradition and modernism, rural and urban, and technology and culture. The comedy film follows Atta Oko, a Ghanaian fisherman, who teams up with a talking fish and his young colleagues—Shasha, Kobina, and Emmanuel—to go to Accra and chase their dreams of owning a boat.
Rickey Adelayitor, who plays Atta Oko, is constantly grumpily complaining about technology in a mixture of awe and irritation, capturing the essence of that tension with expert precision. His performance rises above the rest of the cast as he stands at the centre of the story, holding together its many thematic threads, some stronger than others.
Atta Oko is deathly afraid of leaving the sea; his whole life revolves around being a fisherman, with his highest aspiration being to become boat chief. This stubborn adhesion to tradition puts him at odds with the rest of the film, providing the necessary tension when he is passed over for the position and meets a talking fish. The film’s themes are real and heavy, but in the mouth of a talking fish, they find absurd humour and truth. Voiced by Abdulazeem Dulo Harris, the fish laments about microplastics while telling Atta Oko that he has life-changing advice for him and complaining about the dire state of Atta’s living conditions.
The many themes of Martinson’s The Fisherman sometimes draw momentum and impact from its emotional moments and the rest of the cast. We get glimpses of their lives and aspirations—Kobina and Emmanuel are like brothers while Shasha wants to prove her worth in a sea of men—but it leads to a makeup moment between Naa Oko Sackey, Atta’s daughter, and Shasha that feels confusing, since we have never really seen Shasha struggle with her beauty save a passing comment from the boys.
Despite this, we have a strong connection to Atta and his daughter, who has transformed herself into a version he cannot recognise. There is a moment where he tells a story from her childhood about her love for fishes and you see him wistfully wish for that daughter back. This helps define Atta’s main character: he is hardline on many issues, refusing to budge, but his journey impacts some malleability to his life, allowing him to see his family and companions in a different light. This film captures that well, building moments of discovery around outrageous situations like a restaurant opening centred around this exotic talking fish.
The film’s absurd tone is matched by the way it’s shot. Colourful, vibrant and always moving, it captured the fish out of water moment Atta and his cohort experience in Accra and takes an almost cartoonish visual approach to the story. This helps keep it fresh and expands the boundaries of the reality it creates—remember, there’s a talking fish in this film.
The Fisherman is many things: a criticism of Accra`s urbanism, a warning on the loss of fishing culture in Ghana, a reminder of the ways we destroy our environment and a caution on technology’s erosion of tradition. All these things are sometimes too many for the film to carry, but it ties together an emotional climax for an old man reflecting on his youth and kind of scared for his future.
The Fisherman screened at the New York African Film Festival 2025, which took place from May 7-13.
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Side Musings
- When they lost power during the restaurant opening and the fish said, this isn’t Nigeria, I laughed so much and then reflected on our national shame.
- The old boat chief’s son took his annoying role seriously because I always wanted to fight him.
- Atta Oko wanted to whoop the students at the beginning of the film so bad.
- The Fisherman premiered at Venice Biennale Film Festival, winning UNESCO’s Fellini Medal.
