Im catching up with posting the reviews of the last few films I saw at the IFFI. I watched Timbuktu, a French-Mauritanian film directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. The film is set in Tibuktu the time when Mali is taken over by Jihadis who are fanatic religious fundamentalists, and the countrys people, their rich traditions and heritage is being slowly destroyed. Music is banned, women have to cover themselves completely and cannot go out in public, children cannot play football, Sharia law prevails and the punishment is randomly doled out in the form of public beatings, stoning to death, etc. The local Imam tries to argue with these Jihadis that theirs is very narrow minded intepretation of Islam, but he is unbale to convince them. Outside Timbuktu,in the dunes, Kidane liveas a quiet and peaceful life with his wife Satima, daughter Toya and a small boy Issan, who grazes his cows. One day, his favourite cow GPS, while going for a drink to the river, breaks into fishing nets of Amadou a fisheman. Amadou kills the cow in anger, and Kidane has a fight with Amadou over this and accidenatlly kills him. Kidane is taken away by the fundamentalist police. I think this is a film worth watching for so many reasons. For one, it is beautifully told on so many levels. Despite the story being about religious fundametalists and their supression of a country, there is barely any violence shown in the film. Yet the film leaves the watcher with a very strong sense of the suffering of the people when one sees how they refuse to buckle down. Even the fundamentalist are not portrayed in the stereotypical manner one sees in most other films yet that does not make them any less frightening, perhaps only more so. #IFFI2014 #Goa #FilmFestival #Films #WorldCinema
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 07:25:13 +0000
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