Timbuktu
The recurrent cycle Noir.e.s à la caméra allows us to discover works directed or produced by African or Afrodescendant filmmakers throughout the history of cinema.
Not far from Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya and Issan, their twelve-year-old shepherd.
In town, people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists, determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences.
Kidane and his family are being spared from the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu. But their destiny changes when Kidane accidentaly kills Amadou, the fisherman who slaughtered “GPS”, his beloved cow. He now has to face the new laws of the foreign occupants.
Abderrahmane Sissako
Abderrahmane Sissako is a Mauritanian filmmaker. His themes include globalisation, exile and the displacement of people. He paints Africa with autobiographical touches. He won the FIPRESCI Prize in the 2002 Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard section for Waiting for Happiness. His 2006 film Bamako also received much attention. In 2015, he became the first African filmmaker to win the César Award for Best Director for Timbuktu, which won a total of seven awards at the ceremony. Along with Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambety, Souleymane Cissé, Idrissa Ouedraogo, and Alain Gomis, he is one of the few filmmakers from sub-Saharan Africa to have achieved international renown.
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Image : Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affaires
A cry from the heart
Sissako diversifies aspects of the event into separate fictional scenes, and finds something more than simple outrage and horror, however understandable and necessary those reactions are. He gives us a complex depiction of the kind you don’t get on the nightly TV news, even trying to get inside the heads and hearts of the aggressors themselves...
