Genre Drama

Umuja (2022)

Item: Umuja
Rating: 2.5
Author: Ross McLaren

★★½ — Umuja (2022)

Fine. That's the word, isn't it? Not every film needs to be a revelation, and Umuja doesn't pretend to be one. This is a quiet, modest little story out of Togo, and for the most part it does exactly what it sets out to do, no more and no less.

The setup is simple enough: Anita is a woman who finds herself out of work and, rather than sitting with that, she starts looking for a way through. She links up with a local engineer and the two of them put together a kind of resource-sharing arrangement with a neighbouring town, trading skills and materials to improve the harvest yield for everyone involved. It's a cooperative, community-minded story, and there's something genuinely warm about that at its heart. No villain, no grand dramatic crisis, just people trying to sort things out together.

What I appreciated was that it doesn't overcomplicate itself. The filmmaking is straightforward, clearly working within tight constraints, but it wears those constraints honestly. There's no attempt to dress things up beyond what the production can support, and I respect that. The music is a real highlight, actually. It gives the film a lightness and a local flavour that kept me engaged even when the story wasn't exactly racing along.

There are a couple of genuinely funny moments scattered through it too, which caught me off guard in a pleasant way. Nothing that's going to have you in stitches, but enough to suggest the filmmakers weren't taking themselves too seriously, which suits the tone.

The trouble is that straightforward can tip into flat, and Umuja does drift that way at times. Anita's journey doesn't leave much of an impression beyond the broad strokes. You understand what's happening and why, but you don't feel especially invested in the outcome. The characters are functional rather than fully rounded, which makes it hard to get genuinely caught up in the story. I found myself watching it in a pleasant, slightly detached way, appreciating the sentiment without really being pulled in.

This is part of my A-Z World Movie Tour, where I'm working through films from every country, and Togo was always going to be a tricky one to source. I had previously watched Candomblé in Togo for the country, which is a completely different beast, a documentary record of religious ritual rather than a narrative feature, so it's interesting to finally have something more story-driven from Togolese cinema to sit alongside it.

Umuja is the kind of film that makes you think about what cinema looks like when it's not coming from a place of significant resources or industry infrastructure. It's community storytelling in the most literal sense, and that counts for something. I'm not going to pretend it's more than it is, but I'm also not going to dismiss it. It exists, it functions, it has a decent message about cooperation and making the best of what you've got, and it sent me away feeling mildly cheerful if not especially moved.

Two and a half stars. It's fine, and sometimes fine is enough.

Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2025-09-12

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