Ekoua is an ambitious animated dystopian film from Cote d’Ivoire featuring a Hero’s Journey story which unfortunately loses itself in exposition.
Visually, the 3D animation looks like it’s still in the development stage. Many animated objects are incomplete or forgotten about, such as a waiter carrying a tray with her arms by her side. More objects unnaturally cross spatial boundaries, such as a the baby’s legs blending into the crib it’s lying in when they move.
There’s also an unnecessary amount of shots in which characters are traveling from A to B either by walking or in cars. These shots are usually lengthened either side of the shot to show characters frozen still before and after they’ve started traveling. It adds time to a film which doesn’t need it. It reminded me of watching someone play a long game of Sims.
You could fault the criticisms above on a lack of funding or animated capabilities. Animated African films are rare compared to the number of animated films produced in North America and Asia. Ekoua is an ambitious attempt at creating a new dystopian world through animation. However, even with the limited animation capabilities, a complex storyline makes Ekoua hard to love.
At the start of the film, Ekoua sets itself up as a potential satire by introducing a dystopian world ruled by scammers. However, the scammer dystopia set up in the opening is never explained. The only scammers we see are two brightly dressed men that make it rain in clubs, and suspiciously keep following Ekoua for no apparent reason. Instead of exploring the scammer dystopia, Ekoua alters direction to follow a narrative of Ekoua becoming a ‘seer’ and eliminating an evil baby.
From there the film felt like a slow crazy dream. Here’s an outline of a portion of the plot I understood:
- Ekoua becomes a seer thanks to an elder.
- She has a vision that informs her that her neighbors newborn baby is an evil spirit reincarnated and that she must eliminate it to avoid repeating the same mistakes her mum made.
- Scammers chase Ekoua and beat her up.
- Ekoua takes the evil baby.
- Royal police show up and guide Ekoua to the capital with the evil baby.
- A band of mutated hyenas led by a mutant elephant named Koffi stop them and steal the baby.
- Ekoua tracks the band of mutants to their hideout and recovers the baby.
- Ekoua and the royal policeman move on to the capital.
Then the plot gets confusing.
Overall, Ekoua could do with a bit more simplicity. The story has a lot of different strands (scammer world, Ekoua’s mum, visions, hero’s journey) that make it hard to follow. With a more focused script and more budget to improve the animation, Ekoua would instantly improve.
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