World-premiering at the 2014 Cannes Film Fest, where several of his films have been shown, “Timbuktu” represents Mauritanian-born director Sissako’s first film In Competition.
The film will be shown in October at the New York Film Fest.
On one level, “Timbuktu” can be perceived as a political message feature about an issue few Western viewers know about (and if they do, it’s from the biased media coverage). On another, equally significant level, “Timbuktu” is an arthouse work, sharply told and expertly directed with imagery that’s both breathtaking and heartrending.
After a jihadist takeover of northern Mali, a proud cattle herder comes into fateful conflict with the fundamentalist rulers of the provincial capital, in this lyrical drama from the African filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako.
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 shea man called pherd.A shrewd filmmaker, Sissako knows that lending the film a more straightforward documentary-realist style would limit its accessibility as well as its status as an art work. As a result, he imbues his dark and grim tale with some absurdist and surreal touches.
It’s to Sissako’s credit that “Timbuktu” is effective in both visceral and cerebral ways, due to the humanist perspective that infuses the tale and its characters
