Armar's 'Our Time Will Come' Premieres at Locarno
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- "Our Time Will Come" is Amartei Armar's feature debut, following 15-year-old Owusu and 7-year-old Adobea — two orphans who flee their orphanage to find Owusu's long-lost mother in Accra armed with only an old photograph
- The film premiered at Locarno after being presented at Marrakech's 2025 Atlas Workshops under its original title "Vagabonds"
- Idrissu Tontie Jr. anchors the film as Owusu with what the review calls "an adult-sized performance," shifting from "tense, driven protector to relaxed, swaggering urban denizen"
- The plot mirrors Oliver Twist — after their belongings are stolen by a street kid named Obolo, Owusu and Adobea are taken in by a gang led by Ziggy, described as "a sort of Artful Dodger"
- The film embeds a pointed political critique via a billboard referencing the #ReadTheBill activist campaign against Ghana's 2024 "Family Values" bill, which criminalized the LGBTQ+ community — a detail aimed at Ghanaian audiences as much as festival viewers
- Cinematographer John Kwame Markin visually contrasts "the light-filled openness of the countryside" with "the dark, crowded, disorienting city" of Accra
- The review faults the film for inserting three music montages when one would have sufficed
Why it matters: The film earns strong festival reception across Locarno and Marrakech Atlas Workshops, positioning Armar's debut for international distribution. Its embedded reference to Ghana's 2024 "Family Values" bill and the #ReadTheBill campaign gives the drama domestic stakes beyond its Dickensian surface, signaling the director's intent to speak to audiences at home as much as abroad.
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