Zoey Martinson’s “The Fisherman” Captures Ghana’s Coastal Beauty Through Magical Storytelling

When Zoey Martinson lived in a fishing community in Ghana’s Volta region, the ocean became as unpredictable as any character. Provider one day, threat the next. Years later, writing her debut feature The Fisherman, she gave that ocean a voice. A talking fish joins a retired fisherman on a quest to Accra, cracking jokes and dropping hard truths in equal measure.

 

After premiering at Venice, The Fisherman earned UNESCO’s Fellini Medal and the Ja’net Dubois Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. Last month it premiered in Ghana, where audiences recognized their own uncles in Atta Oko—the stubborn, funny, heartbroken fisherman at the story’s center.

 

Recently, it opened the 16th Silicon Valley African Film Festival, bringing a question the industry keeps dancing around: Why can’t African films be funny and magical and dead serious all at once?

 

This conversation with Martinson was facilitated by Victoria Lissong Richards-Ohwotu of the Sunu Reew Medical Mission and Chike Nwoffiah, Founder of the Silicon Valley African Film Festival.

 

Martinson, born on the Menominee Nation and raised across continents, came to film through theater. She ran Smoke & Mirrors Collaborative, wrote and directed Off-Broadway, earned grants like the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship. Her first feature could have been a documentary about fishing communities. That tonal shift mirrors how many Ghanaians navigate hardship—with humor that carries what words can’t. Instead, she made something harder to categorize: a comedy where the fish talks and the stakes are real.

 

The Fisherman follows Atta Oko and three odd companions chasing his dream of owning a boat. On paper, it sounds simple. In practice, it asks what happens when entire ways of life become obsolete, when systems force people to abandon not just work but identity. The talking fish lets Martinson address all of it without the weight crushing the story.

 

Why Fantasy Works

Martinson didn’t pick fantasy to soften anything. She picked it because the Volta region felt magical when she lived there, because oral traditions in Ghana have always mixed the everyday with the mystical, and because a talking fish can say things a documentary subject can’t.

 

“I’ve always been drawn to fantasy as a way of processing reality,“ she says. “When I lived in a rural fishing community in Ghana’s Volta region, I saw how the ocean represented both survival and uncertainty. Adding a talking fish felt natural because that region is very magical. It let me explore humor, tradition, and change through a comedic lens.“

 

The fish cracks jokes, then turns devastating. That tonal shift mirrors how people in Ghana actually move through hardship. Humor carrying weight that lectures never could. “Fantasy gives us permission to laugh, to dream, and to face hard truths without being crushed by them,“ Martinson explains.

 

Too many films about African communities get made for export, translating local specificity into emotions designed for Western festival audiences. Martinson went another direction: rooted the film so deeply in Ghanaian sensibility that it could only work everywhere.

 

Building Atta Oko

The retired fisherman embodies what Martinson calls “wisdom, stubbornness, and longing.” He’s that uncle at every family gathering. Proud, funny, haunted by what got lost along the way. His boat dream matters because it represents autonomy in a world designed to keep him drifting.

 

“I wanted everyone who has had to make sacrifices to their dreams just to earn a living and survive, to relate to his character,“ Martinson says. “That moment you realize that you fell asleep and stopped dreaming.“

 

She built him from real conversations. Interviewed fishermen. Talked to a boat chief. Spoke with bankers about loan applications. Then turned research into comedy, letting lived experience provide texture while her theatrical instincts found rhythm. One robbery scene came straight from her producer’s life. “It was so funny that I had to put it in the film.“

 

Living across countries taught Martinson that communities face similar pressures everywhere. Tradition colliding with modernity, people holding onto dignity while systems try to erase it. “That perspective helped me approach Ghana’s fishing communities not as ‘other,’ but as part of a global story about resilience, dignity, and adaptation.”

 

Shooting in the Heat

The Fisherman filmed during a Ghanaian heat wave on what Martinson calls “an extremely low budget.” The Chief of Butre supported them. Local fishermen felt pride being featured. The crew kept business in the community.

 

Martinson’s theater training became essential. “Theatre trained me to prioritize the space between what is not said. On set, it has made me very comfortable blocking and directing actors’ performances. Letting actors bring their artistic point of view to the character, finding rhythm in dialogue, and making space for real human behavior.“

 

Understanding what actors do when they’re silent, knowing comedy demands precise timing and total commitment. That theatrical attention gives The Fisherman an intimacy missing from bigger productions. Constraints forced collaboration. Heat became an atmosphere. A small budget required invention.

 

“I learned that directing a feature is more about adaptation,“ Martinson says. “You can plan every detail, but the real artistry comes in embracing the unexpected and trusting your collaborators. That was both terrifying and liberating.”

 

Looking back at the finished film, she adds: “I will always have a sense of pride.”

 

What Ghanaians Saw

Since Venice, The Fisherman has traveled with an argument: joy matters in African storytelling. Comedy doesn’t weaken social critique. It lands differently. Fantasy can reveal truth that realism misses.

 

“I think African cinema is breaking free from being boxed in as ‘issue-driven,’“ Martinson says. “Humor, fantasy, and cultural nuance are just as valid as heavy realism. By leaning into comedy and magic, The Fisherman expands the palette of how African stories can be told and received globally.“

 

For Ghanaian audiences at last month’s premiere, expansion meant recognition. “I hope it feels like seeing themselves celebrated—their humor, flaws, resilience, all of it,“ Martinson says. For international audiences, “a window into a Ghana that isn’t defined by tragedy, but by joy, wit, and humanity.“

 

The responses split along expected lines. “In Mali, audiences tend to be more reserved, perhaps because they are directly concerned by these sensitive subjects in a time of instability. But those who stay until the end discover voices they usually don’t hear, and that opens new perspectives.“

 

That reflects a shared truth across African audiences. As filmmaker Soussaba Cissé observed of her own film Beware!, audiences in Mali respond similarly—reserved at first, then moved by unheard voices. The pattern holds across borders.

 

Martinson’s Ghanaian audiences recognized humor, recognized struggle, recognized that uncle. International viewers found a Ghana beyond the poverty-trauma binary that dominates how African stories get funded and distributed.

 

Festivals as Bridges

Opening SVAFF matters for what it signals. African cinema includes fantasy comedies about talking fish. Includes magical realism and whimsy. Includes stories trusting audiences to understand that a boat can be literal and symbolic, that a fish can talk and tell truth.

 

“Festivals create bridges,“ Martinson says. “SVAFF not only puts films in front of audiences, but it also connects filmmakers to industry, diaspora, and press.“

 

But she’s clear-eyed about limitations. Asked if African films get fair platforms internationally, she’s direct: “Not yet. Too often they are still treated as niche. But our stories speak to humanity as a whole. It’s time for distribution networks and platforms to truly open up to the richness of African cinema.“

 

Venice gave her a medal. Ghana gave her an audience. Silicon Valley gives her a platform. What happens next will reveal whether the industry’s interest in diverse African cinema is genuine—or simply performative.

 

What’s Next

Martinson has a horror project in development. A comedy series. She’s written and directed for MTV/Paramount+ (The Wave) and Hulu (Incomplete). Her range suggests someone less interested in being categorized than in seeing what different genres reveal.

 

“After The Fisherman, I want to keep experimenting with form and tone, but always with the same core: stories that center humor, humanity, and the complexity of African and diasporic lives.“

 

Her combination of indigenous background, pan-African experience, theatrical training, and genre fluency positions her as the kind of filmmaker African cinema needs more of. Not because she represents some perfect identity intersection, but because she’s figured out how to make films that work locally and globally without compromising either.

 

The Fisherman succeeds because it doesn’t explain Ghana to outsiders. It shows the audience a retired fisherman, quirky associates, a talking fish, and a dream that’s both modest and impossible. Whether a person is from Butre or Brooklyn, that person will recognize something: the need to keep dreaming when every rational calculation says stop.

 

Atta Oko wants his boat. Zoey Martinson made a film that honors that wanting—with comedy, magic, and complete seriousness about what matters to people. The talking fish had things to say. Someone finally listened.