Ghana and USA / 2016 / 8mins / Documentary / English

This epistolary short film invites us into the unsettling life of a young Ghanaian man struggling to reconcile his love for his mother with his love for same-sex desire amid the increased tensions incited by same-sex politics in Ghana. Focused on a letter that is ultimately filled with hesitation and uncertainty, Reluctantly Queer both disrobes and questions what it means to be queer for this man in this time and space.

Akosua Adoma Owusu

Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, producer and cinematographer whose films have screened worldwide in prestigious film festivals, museums, galleries, universities and micro-cinemas since 2005. She has exhibited worldwide including Berlinale, Rotterdam, BFI London Film Festival, and the New York African Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. She participated as a featured artist at the 56th Robert Flaherty Seminar programmed by renowned film critic Dennis Lim. She has won numerous fellowships and grants including from the Guggenheim Foundation, Knight Foundation, Creative Capital, MacDowell Colony, Camargo Foundation the Goethe-Institut Salvador-Bahia, and most recently from the Residency Program at Villa Sträuli in Winterthur, Switzerland. Her recent projects include reviving Ghana’s historic Rex Cinema as a creative space for art, music, and film. Owusu received her MFA in Film/Video and Art at the California Institute of the Arts. Currently, she divides her time between Ghana and New York, where she works as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her films are produced under her production company Obibini Pictures LLC. Akosua Adoma Owusu is represented by Andrew Farber at Farber Law LLC. Learn More