By Kurt Jensen
NEW YORK (CNS) – “Timbuktu” (Cohen Media Group) offers one of the most gently lyrical and original portrayals of withstanding tyranny ever shown.
The oppression comes at the hands of jihadists who occupied northern Mali, imposing sharia law based on a fundamentalist reading of the Quran. They’ve banned music and soccer. Bullhorn-wielding “enforcers” with pickup trucks and motorcycles harass and arrest violators. Director Abderrahmane Sissako’s camera lingers on a group of young men, defiantly and joyfully playing soccer. Or so it seems.
There’s no ball. They’re pantomiming a game, getting enjoyment out of it as they jostle in formations and celebrate “goals.” When the enforcers drive past, the players mutely perform calisthenics.
Collective Resistance
“No, it’s not based on a real incident,” Sissako, speaking French, explains through an interpreter. “But since my film talked about three things – what is forbidden, what is justice and our way of looking at women during a jihadist occupation – I thought about how cinema would show that.” He thought the game “a form of collective resistance.”
Most of “Timbuktu” is based on events occurring in early 2012. That’s when ethnic Tuareg rebels, assisted by the Islamist group Ansar Eddine, known to be linked to al-Qaida, overran parts of Mali, a landlocked nation in western Africa. Their goal was to establish a separate state. The French military expelled the jihadists the following year.
Catholics comprise less than 2 percent of Mali’s predominantly Muslim population of 15.3 million. Archbishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako and Catholic Relief Services delivered humanitarian aid in the aftermath of the military action.
The director forgoes awkward political debates to show the occupation’s impact on a tent-dwelling herdsman, Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed). He is devoted to his wife, Satima (Toulou Kiki), 12-year-old daughter, Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed) and to Issan (Mehdi A.G. Mohamed), an orphaned boy the family’s taken under its wing.
Mali has a long tradition of tolerance. So at first, the locals resist their young occupiers with simple refusals. A half-dozen jihadists storm into a quiet mosque during prayers. The imam (Adel Mahmoud Cherif) reminds them they can’t enter a mosque wearing shoes and toting guns.
“But we can,” one replies. “We’re doing jihad.” The imam says: “Please leave.” So they do. Sissako also displays the occupiers’ hypocrisy – banning soccer games even as they eagerly discuss their favorite teams and players.
The true horror arrives after Kidane is arrested and sentenced to death for slaying a fisherman who killed one of his cattle. A couple whose only crime was having relations out of wedlock are buried in the sand up to their necks and stoned.
Sissako, who co-wrote the film with Kessen Tall, was born in Mauritania and educated in Mali. Sissako filmed “Timbuktu” mostly in Oualata, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mauritania he calls the titular locale’s “twin city.”
How does Sissako think his measured presentation can counterbalance desperate acts and murders by Islamic State fighters in the Middle East?
“I believe that when you want to tell about violence, it’s important not to show violence as a spectacle,” he says.
“Art always needs to create a respectable distance when it wants to evoke something. (The film is) a protest against violence, barbarity and terrorism.”
Jensen is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service.