Da Yie (2019)
★½ — Da Yie (2019)
Da Yie (the title translates roughly from Twi as "goodnight" or "sleep well") is a short drama running just twenty-one minutes, shot across the vivid coastal landscapes of Ghana and produced under the Belgian production company Caviar. It arrived in 2019 and spent much of that year making its way around the international short film circuit, picking up a considerable amount of festival attention along the way. For a debut short, that kind of traction is no small thing, and it placed the film in front of audiences who might otherwise never have sought out a Ghanaian-Belgian co-production of this scale.
The film was written and directed by Anthony Nti, a Belgian-Ghanaian filmmaker working in the short form. Caviar, the Brussels-based production outfit behind the project, has a track record of backing work that straddles European funding structures and stories rooted elsewhere in the world. It is the sort of production model that has produced some genuinely interesting cinema from Belgium in recent years, a country that has quietly become a reliable source of distinctive short and feature filmmaking (as anyone who has read my thoughts on Lingui, the Sacred Bonds or The Second Night might recognise). Nti's approach here is grounded in a naturalistic, observational style, drawing on the texture of everyday life along Ghana's coast rather than reaching for anything polished but unremarkable.
At the centre of the film are two young performers, Prince Agortey and Matilda Enchil, playing children who find themselves drawn into an encounter with a stranger named Bogah, played by Goua Robert Grovogui. Ma Abena and Zadi Wonder round out the principal cast. Working with non-professional or semi-professional young actors in this kind of street-level drama is always a risk, and the degree to which it pays off tends to hinge on the director's ability to capture genuine, unguarded moments rather than manufactured ones. The Ghanaian setting gives the film a particular visual energy, all bright light, saturated colour and the particular restless life of a coastal community.
A-Z World Movie Tour Ghana Apparently this won a bunch of short film awards and was even a BAFTA finalist. Honestly I didn't think it was all that good. It was clearly heavily inspired by City of God and I'm kinda happy they didn't explain why the character of Bogah was recruiting kids for an unspecified job, but also owned a video camera. This movie serves as a kind of "stranger danger" awareness piece more than anything. Cinematography was nice. Good use of colours. Other than that... the tagline suggests they'll never be the same again but nothing of note REALLY happened
For me, the festival buzz around Da Yie is genuinely interesting to think about, because it raises the question of what short film juries are actually rewarding when a film like this gets shortlisted. There is clearly craft here, and the location work gives it an atmosphere that a lot of short films strain for and never quite reach. But atmosphere and a good eye for colour only carry you so far when the story itself feels more like a premise than a film. I keep coming back to that comparison with Luigi, another short from the 2010s where the mood does a fair amount of heavy lifting. Sometimes that is enough. Here, I am not sure it was. Worth a watch if you are working through world cinema in the short form, but maybe temper your expectations before you hit play.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2019 | Watched: 2025-06-21
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Da Yie (2019) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Buy: Apple TV Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Buy: Apple TV Store
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Belgium: The Second Night (2016) · The Fourth Kind (2009) · Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998) · A Cat in Paris (2010)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
