Ego Reach We All

«If we find her in Accra, we can be a family again». Fifteen-year-old Owusu has little more than this hope and an old photograph when he sets off with seven-year-old Adobea. His mother abandoned him years ago, but he still hopes to find her in Ghana’s capital.

Amartei Armar’s feature debut, Ego Reach We All, begins like a road movie. Owusu and Adobea are not related, but love each other like siblings. They escape from an orphanage together, with Owusu taking responsibility for the younger girl. Adobea suffers from the same blood disorder that killed her mother and clings to Owusu’s search as if it were her own. What connects them is not blood but maternal absence – and a family bond of their own making.

Cinematographer John Kwame Markin shoots their journey in wide, light-filled images. But with their arrival in Accra, the expanses give way to narrow, darker streets, markets and alleyways. The city almost swallows them whole.

After a street boy named Obolo steals their possessions, Owusu encounters a group of youngsters led by the charismatic Ziggy. The association with Oliver Twist is inevitable: abandoned children surviving by their wits under the authority of an older figure. Yet Armar moves beyond the Dickensian model, portraying the group less as a criminal underworld than as a makeshift family. On the margins of society, Owusu finds what he came to Accra looking for. Armar focuses on children taking on responsibilities that adults and institutions have failed to fulfil: finding food, earning money and protecting the younger ones. Particularly affecting is Suga, the group’s only girl, whose initial harshness gradually gives way to tenderness towards Adobea.

Ego Reach We All does not entirely escape the familiar motifs of the street-child drama. Violence and exploitation sometimes follow well-worn paths, while musical montages underline emotions that need no assistance. Yet Armar’s warm gaze prevents his characters from being reduced to their suffering. Idrissu Tontie Jr. carries the film with remarkable presence: his Owusu has been forced to grow up too soon, yet is occasionally allowed simply to be fifteen. His portrayal earned him the Pardo for Best Performance at Locarno 2026.

The question of family also acquires a political dimension. A «#ReadTheBill» poster refers to Ghanaian legislation that, in the name of «Family Values», seeks to severely restrict LGBTQ+ rights. While politics defines which forms of life may count as family, Armar shows that traditional family structures have already been fractured by poverty and inequality. The film offers a simple, moving answer: family is not defined by blood. Sometimes, family is found in those who stay.