LOCKED IN
2026 · 11m · Ghana
Directed by Stephanie Boateng
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Two friends travel to Ghana to close a lucrative land deal; unexpected challenges test their plans, their friendship, and what "coming home" really costs.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a triumphant return narrative when two friends go back to Ghana for a business deal—Boateng torques that premise into something uncomfortable and irresoluble, where profit and belonging become irreconcilable, and the film refuses to comfort you about either.
Boateng's restraint in the mise-en-scène and her precise calibration of dialogue silence situate this squarely in the lineage of character-driven diaspora cinema, where the formal architecture mirrors the internal fracture between ambition and authenticity.
The film hinges on a single recurring visual—the way Boateng frames her characters' faces during transactions versus moments of vulnerability—and that one formal choice transforms what could be a conventional reconciliation story into an anatomy of complicity and cost.