The Burial Of Kojo: Netflix's original African movie wins Best Narrative Feature award

"The Burial Of Kojo" wins the Best Narrative Feature award at the Luxor African Film Festival a few days before its Netflix debut.

Samuel Blitz Bazawule (Blitz the Ambassador), the writer and producer of the movie, took to Twitter to announce the exciting news on March 21, 2019.

"Excited to announce @TheBurialOfKojo just won the Grand Prize for Best Narrative Feature at the Luxor African Film Festival!!! Congrats to the whole team. We continue to make History," he wrote.

The movie got the same Best Narrative Feature award about six months ago at the 22nd annual Urbanworld Film Festival in 2018.

Recalling how he got the idea for his debut feature film while travelling to Ghana sometime in 2016, he said, "It all began with a newspaper article. The text was bold and direct…."Galamsey Miners Buried Alive." That headline stopped me dead in my tracks. For those unfamiliar with Galamsey, it's a local term for illegal gold mining, an extremely dangerous practice with little financial reward and irreversible environmental consequences."

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Continuing, Blitz added, "I became obsessed with understanding why young men and women risked their lives 30 ft underground, only to be paid a fraction of what the gold was worth. I visited the mining towns of Tarkwa and Prestea to do some research. The more I dug, the more apparent it became who really controlled the illegal gold mining industry in Ghana. Chinese companies assisted by local Chiefs really run the show, operating in the shadows while young local miners suffered all the risks and backlash."

The Burial of Kojo on Netflix

Netflix's original Ghanaian movie is set to premiere on the American streaming platform on March 31, 2019.

It will be the first original movie from Ghana to be released on Netflix.

The film tells the story of the tumultuous relationship between two brothers - Kojo and Kwabena - through the eyes of a powerful girl named Esi. Her gift is the ability to travel between this world and the spiritual realm.

It also touches on Ghana's gold mining challenges and other aspects of the Ghanaian society.