Timbuktu

Story

CLOSING FILM Timbuktu is in the hands of jihadists. A motley crowd of Islamists, radical believers and losers, speaking different languages and scarcely able to communicate with each other, impose a reign of terror on the Malian city. The inhabitants suddenly face a regime that bans music, laughing, cigarettes and even football. Women disappear into the shadows, but face the restrictions proudly and with dignity. Every day improvised courts pass random, often gruesome sentences. Kidane, a Tuareg, is at first unaffected by the changes, as he and his family live a safe distance away in the sand dunes. But that comes to an end when he accidentally kills a fisherman in a brawl. Kidane comes face to face with the new jihadist laws and falls into the clutches of an inhuman regime. Between absurdity and brutality, Timbuktu tells the tragedy of a city in the stranglehold of Islamic fundamentalism in breath-taking, poetic pictures.

Director

Abderrahmane Sissako (*1961) is one of Africa's best-known film-makers. For security reasons, he had to shoot Timbuktu in his home country of Mauretania, instead of Mali. The film ran in competition in Cannes, where Sissako had shown Bamako in 2006.