This post is a part of an ongoing project in which I watch one movie from a different country every other week.
PLOT: A cattle herder, his family and their neighbors find their quiet lives threatened when Sharia law is put into place in the city of Timbuktu.
MEMORABLE MOMENT: Sports have been outlawed so a group of young men play a game of soccer without a ball. They sprint across the field kicking the invisible “ball.” Sometimes the goalie blocks it and sometimes they score but everyone plays along in a sense of camaraderie.
Ironically, there is a scene in which several of the men who are enforcing these laws sit around discussing soccer and debating players. While they aren’t playing the game, they are also not completely adhering to their strict beliefs which prohibit sporting events.
WHO IS THIS MOVIE FOR?: Timbuktu portrays the full spectrum of human behaviors, emotions and reactions to persecution. The central plot revolves around Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed dit Pino), a cattle herder whose cow is killed by a local fisherman. Kidane then shoots the fisherman and must face the consequences under Sharia law.
While this is Timbuktu’s central story thread, the movie also peeks at the lives of the city’s other citizens as they try to survive under harsh oppression. Among others, we meet a female fishmonger who is forced to wear gloves in the market and a woman who is sentenced to forty lashes for being in the same room as a man she is not related to. When these new, strict laws are enforced the characters often react with bitterness and anger, but just as often they laugh at the absurdity of the situation, as if they had just been told a horrible joke. They have been faithful Muslims their entire lives but suddenly strangers are entering their homes and enforcing impossibly strict laws.
Timbuktu is as far from a comedy as a movie can get, but it still portrays fundamentalist law as not only being cruel and inhumane but as absolutely ludicrous, opening the characters to a broader range of emotions. And just about every emotion is portrayed throughout the many intertwining stories. As horrifying and frustrating as this movie can be, there are also moments of true love and tenderness. The filmmakers aren’t simply pointing at how evil the occupiers are, it shows us how loving and kind people in general can be. I’ll be honest, I know next to nothing about the occupation of Timbuktu. While I try to stay informed with the events of the world, this was one topic I knew little about. I believe this is one reason why many American film goers avoid movies like Timbuktu. While we might hear about Sharia law in broad strokes, it often gets glossed over when it doesn’t directly affect us (we are more likely to hear false news stories about Sharia law “taking over” mid-western towns than accurate stories about it affecting other parts of the world). Because we don’t have our fingers on the pulses of these other parts of the world we assume that movies like Timbuktu are inaccessible.
In many cases (especially in this movie’s case) nothing could be further from the truth. While we might not be familiar with the specific politics and history of the city, the range of relationships, emotions and injustices portrayed in the film are universal. For a movie with such a relatively brief running time (97 minutes) it gives us a whole cast of fleshed out, complex characters who aren’t just relatable but also stick with us long after the movie ends.
DIRECTED BY: Abderrahmane Sissako
WRITTEN BY: Abderrahmane Sissako & Kessen Tall
STARING: Ibrahim Ahmed dit Pino, Toulou Kiki & Layla Walet Mohamed
*I wanted to note that while Timbuktu is set in Mali everything I have read about the movie states that it is considered a Mauritanian film (sort of like how an American film can be mostly set in Hong Kong).
