BFI has teamed up with Vue cinemas to showcase incredible stories once a month.

Menasah tells the story of Sarah Obeng, a young Ghanaian American graduate student at Columbia University. On the cusp of writing her dissertation on Molecular Neuro-Oncology, there is no question that she is gifted. She is also very distracted by the affair she is carrying on with her married colleague. He will soon be leaving for Ohio State to take up a position and she plans on following him, completing her thesis there. He has assured her that his marriage is over and soon they’ll be together.

However, her mother dies suddenly, and she must attend to the funeral arrangements in the Bronx. There is humour in the reconciliation of what is the bigger culture clash – her Ghanaian roots or her home in the Bronx where she grew up. Both are a million miles away from her current intellectual Manhattan existence.

Her aunties treat her like a little girl with inconsequential dreams rather than the brilliant student that she is. Like so many stereotypical characters, they are only interested in when she will start having babies and lose some of that bootie, she’s accumulated with the junk food she lives on.

Adding one more conflict into the mix is the arrival of her estranged father from Accra, hoping he will receive something from his wife’s estate. No. It all goes to Sarah; all being the family house and her mother’s religious bookstore. Annoyed, she will have to put off her trip to Ohio. More annoying is that her boyfriend is not returning her texts.

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Director – Nana Mensah

Cast – Nana Mensah, Meeko Gattuso, Oberon K A Adjepong