The Global Griot : Sissako's Cinematic Journey
Bamako / Bamako
Abderrahmane Sissako
Director's bio
Abderrahmane Sissako
Abderrahmane Sissako (born Oct 13, 1961, Kiffa, Mauritania) … Filmography highlights: Life on Earth (1998), Waiting for Happiness (2002), Bamako (2006), Timbuktu (2014), Black Tea (2024). Thematically engaged with globalization and displacement, his work has screened at major festivals and earned significant awards attention.
Synopsis
In a Bamako courtyard shared by families, a trial is staged: African civil society brings symbolic legal action against the World Bank and IMF over debt and structural adjustment. As testimony unfolds, daily life continues—laundry, meals, songs, arguments—blurring theater and reality. Mele, a bar singer, and her unemployed husband Chaka strain under economic and emotional pressures, their faltering marriage echoing a broader social unraveling. Sissako intercuts courtroom rhetoric and intimate vignettes to question responsibility: can institutions be held liable for human consequences, and how do ordinary people bear the weight of abstract policies? A meta-cinematic digression adds irony, yet the film’s heart remains with the courtyard’s inhabitants, whose resilience and fatigue create a chorus more persuasive than any closing argument.
Details of Cast
Aïssa Maïga, Tiécoura Traoré, Hélène Diarra, Habib Dembélé, Saramba Balla, Djénéba Koné, Hamadoun Kassogué, William Bourdon
Details of Crew
Editors: Nadia ben Rachid, Pauline Casalis, Cinematography : Jacques Besse, Sound Design: Dana Farzanehpour, Jean-Christophe Winding
Producer Details
Abderrahmane Sissako, Denis Freyd
Writer Details
Abderrahmane Sissako
Stills
Categories
- International Competition (14)
- Homage (11)
- World Cinema (57)
- Country Focus : Vietnam (5)
- Indian Cinema Now (7)
- Kaleidoscope (8)
- Malayalam Cinema Today (12)
- Restored Classics (5)
- Opening Film (1)
- Special Screening (1)
- Midnight Screening (2)
- Spirit of Cinema (1)
- Signatures In Motion (4)
- Festival Favourites (13)
- Viva el Cine: Latin American Films (5)
- Saeed Mirza Retrospective (3)
- Ritwik Ghatak Centenary (4)
- Youssef Chahine Retrospective (3)
- Garin Nugroho: The Poetic Archipelago (5)
- The Suvarna Legacy : Suvarna Chakoram (17)
- Her Lens Her Voice (5)
- The Pantheon of IFFK: Lifetime (10)
- From Under The Olive Tree (4)
- 50 Years of Rajeevnath (1)
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