Timbuktu(2014)
dir. Abderrahmane Sissako
Jihadists ban music. Timbuktu sings anyway.
Where to watch: Free on Tubi, rent on Apple TVLetterboxd ↗
Mali, 2012. Armed jihadists take over the ancient city of Timbuktu and its surroundings and begin enforcing a new order: music, football, cigarettes and bare hands are all banned. Sissako follows a cattle herder's family on the edge of town, an imam trying to talk the occupiers down, and the residents who keep finding small ways to refuse, until a single accident sets the family against the new law.
Why it’s here
The punk move is the refusal to make the occupiers cartoons: Sissako lets his jihadists be confused, petty, bored and sometimes funny, and in doing so shows the banality of how authoritarian rule gets enforced, one ridiculous prohibition at a time. The pedagogy is in the details. A game of football with no ball, a woman who won't cover her hands, and a song sung in defiance teach a viewer how ordinary people resist when open revolt isn't possible, and how a society's culture is the first thing a regime goes after. It includes scenes of public violence, including a stoning, treated gravely rather than as spectacle, so it suits adults and older teens.
Where This Film Lives
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