Cities of Salt

In a courtyard in Bamako, Mali, a real trial is staged: African civil society puts the World Bank and the IMF in the dock for the damage done by structural adjustment. Lawyers argue, witnesses testify, and around them the family life of the yard goes on: a singer, a husband and wife whose marriage is breaking, a man building a grave. Sissako lets a western play on a television in the background. It is a film that argues, and is also a film about people.

Why it’s here: It's a film that puts debt and aid on trial, in the courtyard where they land. What's punk is the staging: the powerful are summoned to a poor man's yard and made to answer. What's pedagogical is the way it makes an abstract system concrete, with testimony, cross-examination and the lives around it. Pairs with Debt, The Shock Doctrine and Xala. Note: slow, argumentative and in French and Bambara with subtitles; includes a staged western spoof and an intentionally uncomfortable moment of violence. Sissako's Timbuktu was suggested 10-14.

In 2021, twenty-six royal treasures looted by French troops from the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892 are returned to Benin. Diop follows one artifact, a statue numbered 26, as it is packed up in Paris and carried home, and ends with Beninese students arguing over what the return means and who it is for. Part documentary, part essay, with the statue itself given a voice.

Why it’s here: It's a film about what it takes to return what was taken. What's punk is a statue that speaks and a room of students who tell the government it's not enough, twenty-six pieces out of thousands. What's pedagogical is the debate at the end: who owns history, and who decides? Pairs with Open Veins of Latin America, King Leopold's Ghost and Discourse on Colonialism. Note: short (68 minutes), slow and poetic; French, Fon and English with subtitles.