For a film that's filled with hate and fear and frustration, Oscar-nominated Timbuktu, inspired by a year-long occupation of Timbuktu by Islamic militants Ansar Dine, is a quiet and subtle drama.
Smoking is banned. There's no music allowed. No football either. Women must wear veils, gloves and socks. These are some of the new Sharia laws Ansar Dine lay down in a tiny village. The armed soldiers roam the streets, calling out these new laws and reminding the villagers of others. Women are stopped in the street, questioned, and taken away. Meanwhile, out in the desert, a fisherman spears farmer Kidane's (Ahmed) cow when it tramples his nets. In retaliation, Kidane murders the fisherman and is put on trial...
The brutality on show is delivered with a strange understatement. A couple are buried up to their necks and then stoned to death. A woman is lashed for singing and being in the company of men. Another woman is abducted and forced into marriage. Ansar Dine are the judge, jury and executioner.
Sissako mounts little rebellions and protests all the way through. There is the woman who questions the practicality of wearing gloves when she has to clean fish. A mother refuses a soldier's proposal of marriage. In wonderful sequence, children play a game of football with an imaginary ball. All the while Sissako highlights the differences between true Islam and that of Ansar Dine: an elder urges a soldier to renounce Jihad, that it brings shame on Islam; when he gently lists the soldier's crimes, he asks, "Where is God in all this?" The opening shot of a gazelle escaping a truck of rampaging soldiers suggests that this oppression will pass.
And yet there are strong attempts to humanise the oppressors. Before recording his speech to camera where he dedicates his life to Ansar Dine, a young solder debates the merits of Zidane and Messi with two others. When he thinks he's alone, Abdelkrim (Jafri), who at one point slinks off to smoke and flirts with a married woman, loses himself in a silent traditional dance that we can only assume is banned too. When Kidane, through a translator, attempts to appeal to his captor's heart by speaking of his love for his daughter, his captor says that he understands Kidane's love as he too has a daughter... but he regretfully stops his translator relating this.
Gorgeous, haunting, engrossing.