Atta Oko tells a classroom that human beings came from the sea. The children answer with science and glance at their phones. The exchange is funny because he expects the authority of a storyteller and receives the impatience reserved for an old man repeating himself. Ricky Adelayitar lets Atta’s irritation show, but beneath it sits a harder possibility: the sea has given shape to his whole life, and its stories may no longer give shape to anyone else’s.
That fear acquires a humiliating form when Atta is passed over for the position of boat chief. He has waited years to lead his fishing community; the outgoing chief gives the role to his own inexperienced son and names Atta “employee of the month,” with a single fish as his reward.
Zoey Martinson’s The Fisherman understands the cruelty in the scale of that gesture. Atta’s work has been acknowledged and made to seem small at the same time. His refusal to accept the decision can be exasperating, yet Adelayitar makes it difficult to dismiss him as a man merely afraid of change. He is trying to understand what his years at sea count for now.
Then the fish speaks. Koobi, whom Atta alone can usually hear, has opinions about the old man’s living conditions and the polluted water he came from, along with a taste for jokes that arrive at inappropriate moments. The film leaves his presence wonderfully unsettled.
Atta believes the fish has a message for him, though Koobi spends much of his time making a nuisance of himself. Their exchanges give Atta someone who talks back without treating his age as the end of the conversation. The absurdity matters: a film about a man frightened of becoming useless allows him to argue with his reward.
Martinson also gives him younger people who need something from him. Shasha, Kobina, and Emmanuel want to buy a boat and ask Atta to help them form a crew. The invitation offers him a way back to the work he loves, though it cannot restore the position he expected.
Shasha’s presence makes that difference sharper. She has studied nautical science and wants to fish, while her father and the customs of the trade stand in her way because she is a woman. Atta knows how it feels to be denied a place at sea; accepting her place there asks him to look at the tradition he protects from another side.
Their trip to Accra for a loan sends Atta into situations that expose his habits without making him the sole target of the joke. A bank application and an attempt to raise money through poker turn the practical need for a boat into a series of unfamiliar negotiations. Around them sits the larger threat to the fishing community: commercial fishing and pollution are changing the waters regardless of Atta’s feelings about phones. Martinson does not ask a man to adapt to a stable world. His resistance can be stubborn; some of what he fears is happening in plain sight.
The distance from home becomes painful when Atta visits his daughter, Naa. In Accra she calls herself Liz, and she asks him to hide who he is before her wealthy boyfriend’s family. Atta remembers a child who stole his fish to return them to the water.
His account of her childhood is tender, though tenderness cannot tell him why she has chosen this life or what it has cost her to build it. Their disagreement reaches beyond his disapproval of city manners. Each has an image of the other that the person standing before them cannot inhabit. For all his certainty about the daughter he remembers, Atta has to face someone he knows only in part.
One quiet passage gives his longing a shape that the arguments cannot. Sitting by the beach with an old friend, Atta plays in the water, and the film cuts between the men and their childhood selves. The edit allows both ages to occupy the shore for a moment. It feels affectionate without pretending that the younger men are still there to be recovered. Elsewhere, the bright movement of Accra and Koobi’s running commentary keep the film buoyant, so this brief return to the water lands with particular force. Atta can remember a life at sea in perfect detail and still have to decide what to do tomorrow.
The film sometimes moves too quickly to give its other relationships the same weight. A late exchange between Naa and Shasha about appearance and self-acceptance reaches for an intimacy that Shasha’s earlier scenes have barely prepared. Koobi’s jokes, so effective when they interrupt Atta’s gloom, occasionally interrupt feelings the film has only begun to explore.
Still, The Fisherman earns its warmth through the uneasy terms of Atta’s possible return to the water. The boat the younger crew hopes to buy would let him fish again, alongside people whose ambitions require him to listen as well as lead. He cannot become the chief he spent his life expecting to be. Martinson lets that loss remain present even as Atta begins to imagine another place for himself at sea.
The Fisherman rolled out internationally in May 2026 following its historical festival run. The comedic fantasy follows a retired traditional fisherman in Ghana whose life takes an absurd turn when he partners with a sarcastic talking fish to pursue his dream of owning a boat.
Where to Watch The Fisherman (2025) Online
Full Credits
Title: The Fisherman
Distributor: FilmOne Entertainment
Release date: May 15, 2026
Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes (105 minutes)
Director: Zoey Martinson
Writers: Zoey Martinson
Producers and Executive Producers: Zoey Martinson, David Boan
Cast: Ricky Adelayitar, Endurance Dedzo, William Lamptey, Kiki-Romi, Adwoa Akoto, Dulo Harris
- Composer: Avi
The Review
The Fisherman
The Fisherman lets Atta grieve the future he expected without asking him to stop loving the sea. Koobi gives his loneliness a rude, lively voice; the young crew gives him a reason to listen. Some hurried emotional turns weaken the film’s warmth, but its image of two old friends playing at the shore, briefly seen as children again, lingers. Time has taken something from Atta. Martinson leaves room for him to find something ahead.
PROS
- Adelayitar’s funny, wounded Atta
- Koobi’s irreverent exchanges with him
- The beach scene’s moving edit
- A tender, unsettled father-daughter relationship
CONS
- Some rushed emotional turns
- Koobi’s jokes occasionally crowd quieter scenes
