Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Sissako’s stunning recent film, explores the violence that took place during the invasion of northern Mali in 2012. It is a careful exploration of the cruelty that reminds us of the atrocities Malians experienced, and it is also a testament to their resistance. The film subtly raises many issues for the viewer to contemplate, from compassion, or the lack of it, to globalization and migrations. The violence of the invasion replicates and goes beyond the violence and repression of colonialism, deeply interfering in everyone’s daily lives, from cattle-herding Tuaregs to the settled population in Timbuktu. Sissako’s portrayal complicates the perception of the characters of the jihadists (although not their deeds) while also depicting fragments of life for Malians under occupation.

It would be useful, first, to think about Timbuktu in the context of three other depictions in African cinema of terrorists in the name of Islam. Yamina Bacher’s Rashida (2002) is a harrowing film that looks at the rise of terrorism in Algeria through the eyes of its protagonist, Rashida. The terrorists here are one-dimensional, frightening, shadowy young men whose motives are never revealed fully. Nabil Ayouch’s Horses of God (2012), from Morocco, is also an interesting portrait of terrorism, which it portrays as rooted in urban poverty and hopelessness as shown in the story of two young boys and the path that leads them toward becoming suicide bombers. Sissako’s nuanced portrayal of Islamic extremism, however, is closer to that of Mersak Allouache’s fine film The Repentant (2012), which has not received a release or much publicity in the U.S. The Repentant introduces us to a young man, Rachid, who has put down his gun in the Algerian government’s declared amnesty for former Islamic fighters. The film is a complex character study of this former fighter whose past unspeakable deeds are revealed only slowly as his current life entwines him with two victims of a terrorist act in which he was complicit.

Timbuktu has received far more attention than Sissako’s other films, reaching a much broader audience and winning numerous awards. Sissako also has talked about this film in greater detail than any of his previous films. One of the reasons that it has received so much attention is perhaps its condemnation of the 2012 invasion of Mali, a position few would argue against. Sissako himself has stated numerous times that he made the film to bear witness to the violence and some of the horrific acts that took place. He has also stated that he wanted to show that the jihadists, as he refers to them, are also human beings like each one of us (Maheshwari Reference Maheshwari2015; Watershed 2015). It is perhaps the recognition of our common humanity that makes some of their acts even more chilling.

Sissako’s films have consistently depicted what Alireza Doostdar (Reference Doostdar2014) has called an “ecology of cruelty,” from the pain and alienation of migration, to the desperation that is the legacy of colonialism, to the devastating trail left behind by structural adjustment and the consequent growing inequality. They have also testified to the death of migrants, as in the bodies washed ashore in Heremakono (2002) and the flashes of the grueling trip across the desert to reach Europe in Bamako (2006). If anything, the depiction of the invasion of northern Mali is even more gruesome.

Timbuktu does not follow a classical linear narrative. Instead it is made up of different stories through which we get to know the central characters of Kidane, a Tuareg, his family members, and one of the three top jihadists, Abdelkerim. A mixture of close-ups and long shots of the Tuareg family convey the warm and tender relationships among Kidane, his wife, Satima, and their daughter, Toya. (Having a Tuareg family as the center of the film is itself a rarity in African cinema). We learn from Kidane that many who lived in the nearby tents have fled, leaving them isolated; Kidane and Satima are frightened, but he refuses to leave as he doesn’t want to keep fleeing and in any case is unsure of where to go. He thinks their neighbors will return and the reign of the jihadists will pass. However, despite their isolation and traditional life, they are connected to the rest of the world through cell phones, showing the way in which global communication has permeated even the most rural regions. One of their cows is fondly named GPS, attesting to the ease with which technology can be assimilated. As in his other films Sissako deftly shows the free blending of the local and the global.

The other main character is the jihadist leader Abdelkerim, played by Abel Jafri, a Tunisian-born actor of Italian and Tuareg descent. He appears at the beginning of the film in a scene of hostage-taking and then is part of the jihadist group shown entering a mosque with rifles. There are several scenes of him and his driver-translator, Omar (a Malian who speaks English, Arabic, Bambara, and Tamashek), crisscrossing the desert in a jeep. Abdelkerim embodies the complexities of these invaders. We don’t know where he comes from or anything else about him—only that he speaks Arabic and professes his religious and ideological commitments. He is more multidimensional in his everyday life, however. Close-ups reveal a character who seems sometimes at odds with his mission, demonstrating some elements of warmth beneath his cold exterior. He still smokes despite the ban on smoking, and also desires a married woman, Satima, as shown in his visit to her home. His demeanor combines a melange of threats and coyness, but Satima resists his advances and shows her contempt. He then relieves his frustration by wasting bullets shooting at the desert grass.

As with Abdelkerim, Timbuktu does not attempt to explain the background of the invaders or explain their motives directly, but instead provides hints and subtle commentary. For example, it is clear in several references that the jihadists have been in Libya and most of the leaders are Arabic speaking, although Sissako does not mention Ansar Dine or the various Islamic groups in northern Mali, or indeed the MLNA. He does, however, hint at the roots of the conflict. Kidane and his Tuareg family are isolated from the urban community in Timbuktu, and at one point Kidane refers to the “long humiliation.” It is not clear if he is referring to the jihadists or to past wrongs, but the central element of the plot involving the encounter with a local fisherman, Amadou, hints at broader divisions. As Alex Woodson (Reference Woodson2015) notes, the conflict between Kidane and Amadou points to a broader conflict between two different ethnic groups (one settled and one semi-nomadic) whose lifestyles are both threatened by changing environmental conditions as desertification increases in the region and water resources become sparse. The conflict is thus but one manifestation of larger issues, including the region’s general impoverishment and, as Manthia Diawara (Reference Diawara2015) points out, the government’s neglect of conditions in the north. (An interesting aside is that Amadou is played by a first-time actor who was actually a fisherman from Timbuktu who had fled to Mauritania after the Jihadist invasion). But rather than focus on the politics of the various groups, Sissako aims to document the impact on the people of Timbuktu at the receiving end of the invaders’ interference in their daily lives, showing the strength of their resistance.

Sissako has repeatedly said that “cinema is the language of image” (Niedan Reference Niedan2013), and he has worked to develop a cinema language bearing his own cinema “accent” (Maheshwari Reference Maheshwari2015). Sissako’s images thus do not follow a conventional narrative style; rather, the narratives emerge from the images. As Diawara (Reference Diawara2015) points out,

Yet there is also an idiosyncrasy in Sissako’s filmmaking that keeps his films from achieving perfection in a conventional sense. The imperfection of his pensive, poetic style leaves the viewer space for thought and reminds us, as Diawara also suggests, of the influence of “imperfect cinema” on his film language.

As in his other films, the cinematography in Timbuktu is often strikingly beautiful and carefully orchestrated, despite the fact that it was shot in difficult circumstances in Oulata in Mauritania. Like the other films it incorporates various vignettes of everyday life. Many of the most powerful sequences feature animals, from the long shots of the cattle herded across the desert, to donkeys wandering up an alley or blocking the narrow streets with their heavy loads. Even during a football scene a donkey wanders in front of the goal posts, and camels are seen “parked” on the edge of the city where the film’s climax takes place.

For this film Sissako chose to work with a new cinematographer, replacing his usual French cinematographer, Jacques Besse, with Sofia El Fani, a Tunisian who was the cinematographer for Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013). El Fani captures Sissako’s aesthetics with equal skill, although perhaps the rhythm within each shot is somewhat faster than his predecessor’s. Sissako includes a number of long shots with deep focus, and long takes, not as establishing shots or finishing shots as in Western cinema, but to bring our attention to time and space and to connect characters to their environment. A beautiful but tragic example of this is the wide shot following the critical scene in which Kidane shoots Amadou, as we watch Kidane cross back over the river where the event took place. The camera remains still until we can no longer see him walking off to the left of the screen. The only movements as he crosses are in the ebb of his stride in the water and on the far right of the screen those of a dying Amadou, who struggles to get up and then dies.

In his previous films long shots are more pronounced, especially in Heremakono, where people literally stay on screen until they walk out of sight. This technique is used in Timbuktu as well, but the film jumps more quickly from scene to scene. As Sissako says, “I try to leave a scene quickly to go somewhere that has nothing to do with what’s been going on” (Bartlet Reference Bartlet2002). He cuts from shots of jihadists prowling the alleys and rooftops of the old city carrying their machine guns, to close-ups and wider shots of Kidane’s family, to scenes of Issan, Kidane’s young nephew, running behind the cows as they search for sparse grazing land. Then there are the shots of Zabou, a tall and strikingly uncovered woman, wandering around the town dragging her chador, defiantly resisting the jihadists (and even shouting curses at them). We also see close-ups of her face intently observing the dance performed by one of the jihadists, whom she affectionately calls Sweet Pea as he hangs around her residence. Close-ups also show the characters of Kidane, Satima, and Toya, as well as the fear in the face of the footballer who is sentenced to whipping and the painful expression of the Malian convert trying to make a video of his newfound life. In this latter scene the camera effectively reveals his doubts instead of his conviction as he talks about his past as a rapper and his current transformation. Sissako has said that he wanted to show that surely many of the jihadists have doubts about what they are doing (Aguilar Reference Aguilar2015).

Much of Sissako’s “cinema language” is created through color. Among the mostly earth tones of the city of Timbuktu flashes of color burst forth as if representing Malian resistance: the indigo net hanging on the walls of Kidane’s tent, the bright turquoise cloth of Zabou’s blouse, the red skirt of the young woman resisting a marriage proposal, a brightly patterned gown of an old woman, the red patterned skirt of the fish vendor, the colors of the boys’ jerseys in the football scene. We also recognize the water carrier, who will take Satima on her final ride to join Kidane, by the green and white clothing he wears throughout the film as we see him weaving his motorcycle through the narrow streets of the city, to the river, and to the Tuareg settlement.

The “cinema language” is also created through music and sound. Musicians, singers, and dancers populate the cast of Timbuktu, which, along with well-known actors includes first-time actor-musicians. For example, Kidane, played by Ibrahim Ahmed, is a guitarist who lives in Madrid, and Toulou Kiki, who plays Satima, is a singer from Niger now living in France (Silverman Reference Silverman2015). As Achille Mbembe (Reference Mbembe2015) states, “In Africa, music has always been a celebration of the ineradicability of life, in a long life-denying history. It is the genre that has historically expressed, in the most haunting way, our raging desire not only for existence, but more importantly for joy in existence—what we should call the practice of joy before death.” In Timbuktu, music pervades the city despite the banning of music by the invaders. In a lovely domestic scene Kidane plays the guitar in his tent and sings with his wife and daughter. In one absurdist and somewhat comedic scene the jihadists are prowling at night to find the source of some banned music only to discover that the source is a man singing praises to Allah. This requires a brief call to the leadership to know if they should intervene. One of the most harrowing moments of the film is the whipping of singer Fatoumata Diawara who turns her cry of pain into a song of defiance.

For the first time Sissako worked with a composer instead of utilizing existing music for the soundtrack of Timbuktu. His other films integrate local music such as that of Oumou Sangare in Heremakono, the hauntingly beautiful music in Bamako, and Salif Keita’s moving song “Folon” (“The Past”) in La Vie sur terre. In Timbuktu he collaborated with the Tunisian French composer Amine Bouhafa. Unlike a traditional film score, which is matched to the action and follows the events, the music in the film is more subtle and often absent as the silence speaks or is broken by the roar of motorcycles or the invaders’ trucks. As Bouhafa states, the music softens the violence and adds to the poetry of the film. It is a delicate blend of Western music and more indigenous forms “using a duduk (an ancient Armenian flute), percussion, kora, Malian guitars, oud, piano” (Cinezik.fr. 2014), as well as the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, which performs the remarkable accompaniment to the football scene with the invisible ball, which can be seen as a dance of resistance. Bouhafa composed the music and Fatoumata Diawara also sings and wrote the lyrics for the stunningly beautiful theme song, “Timbuktu Fasso.” The only incident that has more conventional film music is the scene in which Amadou hits and kills Kidane’s cow, the event that will lead to their encounter by the river. The music is then followed by silence during the close-up shots of the dying cow, a metaphorical representation of the undeserved violence unleashed in the area.

While the film is moved along by visuals and music, another important theme in Timbuktu is language. In Heremakono the main character, Abdullah, had been away for so long he no longer speaks the local language and is isolated from the local community. In Bamako, as Stephen Thomas (Reference Thomas2014) points out, the language of the trial is French, but witnesses have to testify with the services of a court translator who can speak Bambara. The character of Chaka is learning Hebrew in the hope of getting a job should Israel open a consulate, and in a particularly powerful scene the anguished cry of an elderly griot is so wrenching that it does not need to be translated. Timbuktu is notable for the number of languages spoken and the frequent need for translations. The Islamist leaders do not speak the local languages and must act through interpreters. In one rather chilling scene one of the occupiers proposes marriage to a local woman in sentences that combine Bambara and limited English: we fully understand the implied threat of force in his words. In a mordantly comedic scene the jihadist who finds the body of Amadou tries to report this discovery to his leaders in Arabic. But they don’t understand and tell him to speak English, to which he replies very stiltedly and with frustration, “I say somebody killed somebody here.” Kidane and Satima, by contrast, speak in intimate, elliptical phrases that have a meaning of their own, as Sissako discussed in his extensive press conference after winning at Cannes (Festival de Cannes 2014). As Kidane leaves to confront Amadou the fisherman, he turns to Satima and says, more or less, “that which you already know,” which is his way of saying “I love you.”

Yet Sissako, again, is careful to avoid absolutist distinctions between the occupiers and the local community. He also shows a tolerant and gentle side of Islam in the film, which is conveyed through the Imam in the local mosque who makes a powerful attempt to engage in dialogue with the jihadists and at first appears to be gaining some ground. The jihadist leader listens attentively, giving us at first the impression that he might be reconsidering. The same leader also seems to listen carefully to Kidane, even sympathizing as he collects evidence. Nevertheless, toward the end the film the Jihadist leaders firmly refuse to listen to the Imam’s plea to annul the forced marriage of a young Malian woman to one of the invaders, stating that the man “was a good man.” The view of the Jihadists begins to turn darker, and as Danny Leigh (Reference Leigh2015) noted, “you can almost sense Sissako raging off-camera.”

Such glimmerings of humanity are also challenged, of course by the incidents of public whipping that are shown throughout the film, and especially by the particularly gruesome scene in which a couple is stoned to death. This scene is filmed with a long shot so that we only see their heads buried to the neck as they are pelted with stones; the film spares us some of the other horrific details of the invaders’ deeds. Similarly, the many amputations are alluded to rather than shown, as when a woman in the fish market reacts with anger and tells the jihadists to cut off her hands since she can’t wear gloves to sell fish. Yet even such terrible scenes are imbued with ambiguity. The stoning scene, for example, is intercut with images of the jihadists dancing. As Sissako states, “On the one hand, that dance scene allowed me to create enough distance to confront this terrible scene; on the other, it shows that the jihadist is like us, that in every person there is the good and evil” (Watershed 2015).

But even with its nuanced portrayal of the invaders, Timbuktu is first and foremost an acknowledgment of the atrocities that took place and a testament to the resistance of the people who had to endure them. The film’s dramatic climax (somewhat of departure for Sissako) comes with the shooting of Kidane and Satima, after which the viewer is left with the images of two scared children, Toya and Issan, running in panic alone in the desert with a future as uncertain as Timbuktu’s at the time of filming. Their vulnerability is striking, yet the resilience of the children depicted during the film’s development leads us to consider the possibility that they, like Timbuktu, might after all survive.