The Burial of Kojo Finds Humanity In Stylized Dreams

Much like Sean Baker's The Florida Project, The Burial of Kojo is a story about the struggles of adulthood told through the perspective of a child. In the case of this Blitz Bazawule directorial effort, the story is told as a quasi-fairy tale through the eyes of Esi (Cynthia Dankwa), who recounts a story about her Father, Kojo (Joseph Otsiman), who brought Esi and her Mother out to an isolated part of Ghana after a personal tragedy. Kojo and his family are lured back to city living by Kojo's brother, the person who was hurt most by Kojo's actions from so long ago. The past begins to catch up to the present for Kojo and her family and nothing good can emerge when these two elements collide.


This story makes heavy uses of dreams to explore the interior psychological states of its principal players. The eye-catching image that serves as the movies poster is a recurring dream Kojo has had for years. Eventually, we get the full context for this dream it's an extension of a deadly car accident he was a part of years ago. Before that, though, it still works perfectly as a stirring visual that captures the notion that something is askew in this man's soul. The Burial of Kojo has a gift for creating visuals, like the haunting image of a car on fire on an empty beach, that can simultaneously function as interesting ways of exploring the characters and just bold imagery in their own right.

This trait is especially noteworthy in an early dream sequence after Esi is introduced to the idea of an evil being resembling a humanoid crow that threatens to take away her pet bird. Bazawule previously filmed Kojo's dream with a sense of stillness and clarity to reflect how Kojo knows what trauma he's caused. By contrast, Eli's dream about this crow-demon has a disorienting quality to it that reflects how the youngster is barely familiar with the mythos she's dabbling in. The camera starts upside-down before flipping itself upright all the while this human/crow creature just sits on horseback surrounded by billowing pink smoke.

It's the pink smoke that really sells the lucid state of this dream sequence. We don't usually associate such a bright color with villainy but dreams don't have to follow conventional visual wisdom. Bazawule uses the visual freedom of dreams to create exquisitely memorable shots all throughout The Burial of Kojo that lend a vibrant physical form to the interior struggles of these characters. Such visuals aren't the only way The Burial of Kojo makes use of elements that deviate from grounded reality. Bazawule's script deftly begins to blur the lines between the fantastical and reality in a good stretch of the third act involving Esi trying to save her Father that's pulled off impressively well.

One reason such a section of the story feels like an organic extension of what's come before is that, no matter what, The Burial of Kojo firmly maintains its primary focus on the characters of Esi, Kojo and her family. Recognizably human experiences and perspectives are felt throughout the entire story, even when Esi begins to use a bird to help track her father. Persistent humanity means you can buy into whatever visually beautiful flights of fancy The Burial of Kojo takes you down. Such humanity is also anchored by how Blitz Bazawule's realistically complex rendering of how these characters interact with one another, particularly in regards to Kojo and his brother Kwabena (Kobina Amissah-Sam).

One is never fully sure how Kwabena feels about Kojo whenever they share the screen together. Does he still harbor a grudge against his brother? Has forgiveness entered his heart? Is he caught between those two emotions? It's an authentically unpredictable portrait of the strained dynamic between two family members ripped apart by tragedy. It's in this quality of The Burial of Kojo that we see how this movie channels real human experiences so impressively and that vivid humanity goes right back to those distinctive dream sequences peppered throughout the runtime. It's here that the most visually memorable and achingly human parts of Blitz Bazawule's remarkable feature film directorial debut The Burial of Kojo.