Azali

In Azali, the film opens with sweeping aerial vistas of Northern Ghana's savanna and rice paddies, establishing the rural world of Zebilla township. Fourteen-year-old Amina sits in a school classroom when police raid a truck on a dark road and discover hidden passengers. The event ripples into her life as a social welfare officer questions Amina about her origins. Back in the village her mother Rukaya faces intense pressure from relatives and a matchmaker to send Amina into marriage with an older man named Baba Dauda or to work in Burkina Faso. Amina's brother Yussif, also called Akatok, drifts resentfully through the compound and clashes with their mother and aunties, and their grandmother tries to comfort the terrified girl. Amina is put on a yellow bus bound for a children's home in Bawku where she meets Seidu, a street-wise boy given away by his parents, and the two bond over shared abandonment and plan an escape. Under cover of night Amina, Seidu, and other children flee the dormitory and hide in the back of a cargo truck loaded with yams and driven by Fuseini. The truck's passenger, a stern man called Baba, discovers them but agrees to let them stay and work selling yams in Tamale market in exchange for transport money. After a day of trading the group decides to continue south to Accra, lured by the promise of greater earnings. Amina boards a bus with Seidu and the others and arrives wide-eyed in the sprawling chaotic capital where she quickly becomes separated from the group. She finds herself alone in the dense markets and slums of Accra moving through a world of kayayoo head porters, predatory men, and ruthless landladies who demand daily rent. Amina's descent into the city's underbelly accelerates when a man propositions her with money for sex and she fiercely refuses, declaring she is not a prostitute, and she then seeks out Seidu in a dark room but walks into a trap where a man calling himself Boss locks her in.