Savannah Acquah’s cultural highlights

The filmmaker, writer and actor on the delicate genius of the film Moonlight, Little Simz's music, the Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, the energy in Yomi Ṣode's writing and her appreciation for the playwright debbie tucker green.

by Savannah Acquah

18th February 2026

Savannah Acquah. Photo by Andy Martinez

Savannah Acquah is a filmmaker, writer and actor. Her films have screened at Oscar- and BAFTA-qualifying festivals around the world. Her theatre work has been performed with Talawa and at the Royal Exchange, HOME Manchester, Contact Theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe.

Savannah has worked with WritersMosaic and the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation on a series of poetry short films. She recently completed the Royal Court’s Introduction to Playwriting Group and is currently working on a number of new film projects. Her acting credits include work for the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky.

Film: Moonlight (2016) directed by Barry Jenkins

I first watched Moonlight in the cinema when I was 16, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It impacted me in a way that was more felt than cognitive. Since then, the film has informed probably everything I’ve ever made. I tried to make sense of its beautiful, delicate genius through my university dissertation and first short film and I constantly use stills from the film in pitch decks for projects.

Moonlight tells a story of Black queer lives and love in a way that, 10 years on, is still too rarely seen. It’s so tender and gorgeous (the shots, the colours, the music!) and sits confidently in complexity. And it makes my heart ache and fly every time I watch it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4975722/

Music: Little Simz

It feels like Little Simz has been around forever – since she was little – and ‘101 FM’, among other songs, was the soundtrack to my late teenage years into adulthood.

It’s not just her music but the way she carries herself; she’s unapologetically individual and unwaveringly cool, exuding a confidence that gently commands your attention. Artfully mixing politics with personal stories and pure enjoyment, Little Simz makes music that has the urgency of something living at the surface of her chest that she needs to release, but that is told so precisely that we don’t miss a beat or lyric.

https://littlesimz.com/

Photography: James Barnor

I came across the work of Ghanaian photographer James Barnor at an exhibition in London. I was immediately pulled in by his portraits of people living in Ghana before and after independence in 1957, a more personal side of history that I hadn’t seen depicted visually. Currently writing this in Ghana, I’ve just revisited the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and was reminded of Barnor’s work.

I feel like you can see defiance and hope in the expressions of his subjects looking down the lens from that time. I particularly love the simplicity of his photographs, really giving space to the people in them and their self-expression.

https://www.instagram.com/james_barnor_archives/?hl=en

Literature: Yomi Ṣode

I first saw writer Yomi Ṣode live in Manchester and immediately became a fan. I quickly learnt that sitting in an audience watching Ṣode perform isn’t a passive experience – he encourages the audience to feel free, make noise, join in. His audience often becomes most active with his poem ‘YNWA: A Karaoke Interlude’, that joyfully takes us back in time with iconic lyrics that Ṣode lets the audience run with until they run out of breath or memory.

And even his words on the page feel like you’re hearing them out loud. They’re vivid and alive and full of energy.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/445753/manorism-by-sode-yomi/9781802061932

Theatre: debbie tucker green

I regularly find myself dipping back into one of debbie tucker green’s plays, both as a writer and an actor. Reading her plays out loud is always an exciting challenge, and I find the way she writes endlessly inspiring.

Her 2018 play ear for eye feels like it picks me up and shakes me every time I revisit it – it awakens my senses, it speaks to those parts that can be hard to articulate but need to be heard.

tucker green’s work encourages me to be more unafraid in my own work and reminds me that I don’t need to comply.

https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/ear-for-eye

Favourite WritersMosaic writer

I saw Salena Godden at spoken word event Jawdance (hosted that evening by Yomi Ṣode!) while I was working a shift at Rich Mix a couple of years ago. Her poem ‘And You Will Go’… Wow. It hit.