Ahmed Koroma is a Sierra Leonean screenwriter, director, and cinematographer and among a distinguished group of highly talented African filmmakers Mati Diop, Moussa Toure, Macherie Ekwa Bahango, Kunle Afolayan and Wanuri Kahill reimagining a new visual landscape for telling the complex and varied stories of African life as it strives to gain mastery to the pathways to its own future.  Ahmed Koroma’s own work centres around an Africanised future constructed through the fusion of past and present spiritual/cultural practices of African excellence.  

For him, as he makes clear,  “cinema is our cultural memory not only visualised but also actively alive in informing and educating our consciousness in taking personal as well as collective responsibility in opening access to a self-determining future.”   

This social philosophy is no better expressed than in his documentary works in titles such as Dreams of Youth, If be Know, Good Education and Things Diya, and Poor Toilet Facility. The common theme running through these works draw attention to the failure of both state and non-state governing authorities to provide basic human social services in order to arrest and alleviate the chronic impoverishment and the stunting of the life-chances of children and youth populations.  

In his first full feature film “Na You” Ahmed tackles misogyny head–on. He identifies this social disease not just as patriarchal oppression and domination but as a critical societal problem and insists “ that when more than half our population is devalued and rendered incapacitated to contribute fully to society, our culture is engaged in wilful self-harm. And this is like trying to build our future with one hand tied behind our backs, which is something we Africans simply cannot afford and should no longer tolerate” 

Ahmed Koroma’s second film “Next of kin” delves into African magical realism and fantasy evoking fantastic spiritual forces (i.e. ancestor memories) as allies in both shaping the realities of people’s everyday experiences and projecting themselves from an ever-transforming present into a future of new possibilities. Fantastic mythical tales, religious stories, fairy tales are human conceptions trying to grow the actionable self-realising flesh of reality.  

As Ahmed Koroma again aptly puts it “When a culture fails to see through the eyes of its own cultural imagination it remains blind “ 

Ahmed Koroma is currently working with FSL multimedia company