Onua Mekyea Wo O! I greet you my people as the people of Benin say in Twi!! Welcome back to another lovely weekly Movie and TV Review. The film under scrutiny this week is Tori and Lokita. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the fine print again, so this movie is of the depressing variety. I swear this world can really get you down if you let it. Anypoops, Tori and Lokita follows two adolescent orphans as they fight to stay together. I kept hoping, wishing their situation would be that of a Disney-like movie where things eventually got better, but no. So if you’re looking for a heartwarming feel-good movie, keep looking. Now let’s be getting it!! Lol.

Even after watching the film repeatedly, I’m still not quite sure how they met. Somewhere along the line, Tori and Lokita met in Italy through the illegal smuggling ring. A child sacrifice to the lake god, Oueme, Tori, was abandoned as a baby and later brought to a French-speaking Belgian country (once again this was not quite specified or I wasn’t paid close enough attention.) Lokita, on the other hand, is technically not an orphan as her mother is still living, but not in the picture. The official story told to the immigration officer was that the two were separated after Tori killed their mother at birth thus labeling him a witch child, and Lokita came to claim him. Meanwhile, as they try to prove siblinghood, Tori and Lokita struggle to make ends meet as they’re in the hole six-hundred plus Euros to the scumbag smugglers, Justine and Firmin, and they must send money home to Lokita’s mother.

The Black Tax
If you ask most black people, foreigners who immigrated to the US, or first-generation affluent people what the Black Tax is you’d hear something along the lines of the younger generation working hard to bring up the older generation up to ground zero. Usually, financially, someone goes to college or gets an opportunity that would pull them and those connected to them out of poverty and into a nice neighborhood, so whatever they make belongs to the greater good of the family. You, the worker, don’t get to keep the money and thus is the case for Lokita. The breadwinner, Lokita is continuously subjected to abuses of the worst cases. It’s no wonder she’s popping pills to manage the anxiety. She and Tori earn their keep by selling weed for Chef Betim, the piece of shit low-life that sexually abuses Lokita in exchange for fake papers. Why? Simply because he can. No one is there to protect Lokita. The smugglers, Justine and Firmin, only see her as a cash cow. Likely they introduced her to him.

Spoiler Alert: Lokita dies. But as sad as it was, I was relieved for her. At last she was free of the adults taking advantage of her, but Tori was alone again. I was just over it. Luck for me all I had to do was just force myself to watch the film, but it’s reality for somebody somewhere.

Anypoops, I give the film 4 out of 5 rose petals.