Zongo, an award winning feature documentary film entirely directed and produced by Elias Mierbeth and Michael Herzog. Officially nominated for the Globe and Dikalo film award 2021.

Film description

ZONGO tells the story of Clement waking up in prison after an attempted suicide in the streets of Ghana. It is the journey of his path from poverty and hopelessness towards creating opportunities for societal progress of the rural youth in the region. In the tradition of campfire storytelling, Clement opens a mysterious world of tribes, black magic and his life philosophy. He takes us into an african story, directed by the people’s spirit and the continent itself.  The filmmakers Elias Mierbeth and Michael Herzog give a voice to Clement, his childhood and youth marked by fear of death and the struggle for survival. Images and sound unobtrusively draw attention to the circumstances of the Ghanaian people without operating on clichés. The movie does not classify, instead it leaves Clement the power to unravel his experiences. Superstition, disease, and poverty turns into a lesson about the importance of education, hope and dreams.

The film is a fragment of reality, of a country, of a continent yet it shows this fragment with unusual sensitivity. Powerful pictures, bright colors, people full of beauty pull us into a world completely different from what we are used to from the news. In the end it is us who have just learned a lot from this young man, his story, his courage, his dream.

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Find Zongo on IMDB.