Joe completely neglects his African identity and considers himself a white Christian male. Joe (Nick Medley) has been made a head slave and often has to discipline other slaves in order to keep his master happy. Nunu comes into conflict with her own mixed-race son, Joe, who is fathered by a white man who raped Nunu on a slave ship. The slaves of the society altogether decide to execute a revolt which leaves a bunch of sugar cane land in ashes. At first, Shola claims that she can not get herself to join the secret society due to the Christian in her. Shola witnesses Nunu and Shango being actively involved in a secret society that had meetings at night and had memberships consisting of slaves from the Lafayette plantation as well as other plantations. Both Nunu and Shango resist and rebel against the slave system by doing everything in their power to gain freedom. When asked about why he will not simply run away from the plantation, he says it is because he can not leave his fellow slaves behind. Shango often performs rebellious acts such as trying to get Shola to poison the overseer or even cutting down sugar canes out of anger. There are many instances where Shango gets himself in trouble for attempting to fight on behalf of another slave. Shango is named after a Yoruba god and displays loyalty to his fellow slaves to the extent that he would risk his own life. On the plantation, Shola encounters many characters including Nunu (Alexandra Duah), an African-born field hand who went about her day-to-day life with Africa still living in her heart and was characterized as a "strong motherly slave with a rebel mindset" Noble Ali ( Afemo Omilami), a headman with split loyalty between his masters and fellow slaves and who deeply loved Nunu and refused to let anything happen to her and Shango ( Mutabaruka), a rebellious West Indian slave who was sold to the Lafeyettes' after being deemed a trouble-maker and who soon became the lover of Shola. Mona is then transported into the body of a house servant named Shola "to live the life of her enslaved ancestors." She is taken to the Lafayette plantation in the Southern United States where she suffers abuse by her slave masters and is often a victim of rape. 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. Mona attempts to run out of the slave castle and is met by white slave masters who she tries to reason with by claiming that she is of American descent and not of African descent. 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. 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. While Mona is on the beach modeling, she encounters the mysterious old man Sankofa who was playing the drums at the beginning of the film.
She has a session at Cape Coast Castle, which she does not know was historically used for the Atlantic slave trade because she has been disconnected from her African roots for so long. The story then goes on to show Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano), a contemporary African-American model on a film shoot in Ghana. He believes that his drumming is essential in bringing the spirit of his ancestors who were killed in the African diaspora back home. 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, specifically Ghana. Gerima used the journey of the character Mona to show how the African perception of identity included recognizing one's roots and "returning to one’s source" (Gerima). Gerima's film showed the importance of not having people of African descent drift far away from their African roots. In the film, Sankofa is depicted by a bird and the chants and drumming of a Divine Drummer. The word Sankofa stresses the importance of one not drifting too far away from one's past in order to progress in the future. The word Sankofa derives its meaning from the Ghanaian Akan language which means to "go back, look for, and gain wisdom, power and hope," according to Dr.
The storyline features Oyafunmike Ogunlano, Kofi Ghanaba, Mutabaruka, Alexandra Duah, and Afemo Omilami. Sankofa ( Amharic: ሳንኮፋ) is a 1993 Ethiopian-produced drama film directed by Haile Gerima centered on the Atlantic slave trade.