In a dusty city in northern Mali, armed men announce new rules through loudspeakers. Music is banned. Football is banned. Women must cover their hands. A group of young men play football without a ball, miming every pass and shot so they cannot be punished. Outside the city, a cattle herder named Kidane lives peacefully with his family until a dispute changes their lives. Timbuktu, released in 2014, is a quiet, beautiful and devastating portrait of life under jihadist occupation.
The director and Kidane
Abderrahmane Sissako was born in Mauritania and grew up partly in Mali. He studied film in Moscow and made acclaimed films such as Bamako (2006). In 2012, militant groups seized northern Mali, including Timbuktu, imposing harsh rule until French and Malian forces pushed them out in 2013. Sissako was moved by a real case in which a couple was stoned to death in a town in northern Mali for having children outside marriage.
The film follows Kidane, a Tuareg herder, his wife and his daughter, whose lives are upended after a confrontation over a cow.
Football, militants and awards
The scene of young men playing football without a ball became the film’s most famous image, a symbol of quiet resistance. Sissako uses long, beautiful shots of the desert and the city, contrasting natural beauty with cruelty. The film shows the jihadists as human and sometimes absurd, struggling with their own rules, which makes the violence more chilling.
Timbuktu competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and won the Ecumenical Jury Prize. In 2015, it won seven César Awards in France, including Best Film and Best Director.
The Oscar nomination and legacy
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Mauritania’s first nomination. For security reasons, much of the film was shot in Mauritania rather than in Timbuktu itself. Critics around the world praised the film for its humanity and restraint, and many named it among the best films of the year.
Timbuktu is regarded as one of the most important African films of the twenty-first century. The young men in Timbuktu play football with an imaginary ball because a real one is forbidden. Audiences who watch that scene rarely forget it.
