While visiting an old fortress from the slave-trade era in Ghana, Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano) encounters a colorful local character, an elderly mystic going by the name of Sankofa. Mona is a black American model visiting the country for a photo-session. The old man claims to be in contact with spirits, and she is intrigued by this. When she goes to visit him, she suddenly finds herself back in the old slavery days, a slave herself who is captured and shipped to a sugar planation in the American south. There, she has various relationships and adventures in the build-up to participating in a slave revolt. Just as that is getting fully underway, she finds herself back in the present, deeply affected by what has gone before. The old mystic's name is a word in the Akan language which has the complex meaning of going to the past, remembering it, and with it, turning to the future. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide