By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca

Countdown To Cannes: Abderrahmane Sissako

timbuktuThe fourteenth in a series of snapshots outlining the nineteen directors in the 67th Palme d’Or Competition.

Background: Mauritanian; born Kiffa, Mauritania 1961.

Known for / style: Life on Earth (1998), Waiting for Happiness (2002), Bamako (2006); themes of alienation, foreignness, rejection, or displacement; experimenting with improvisation; working with cinematographer Jacques Besse; shooting in Mali; the use of non-actors; narratives of immigration, colonialism, and globalization.

Notable accolades: Despite the challenges African filmmakers face getting their work screened, Sissako has done  well: at Cannes, Waiting for Happiness took a FIPRESCI prize and won Sissako the “Foreign Cineaste of the Year” title; at FESPACO, the film won the fest’s Grand Prize. Also at FESPACO, Life on Earth snagged a special mention, the Air Afrique award, the TELCIPRO award, and the NALCO award. 2006’s Bamako won Sissako the Lumiere Award for Best French-language film.

Previous Cannes appearances: Sissako joins the Competition for the first time in 2014. Prior, he’s screened twice in Un Certain Regard (his short Octobre and feature Waiting for Happiness), once in a parallel section (Life on Earth), and once out of Competition (Bamako). He’s also sat on three separate Cannes juries: short film (2000, member), Un Certain Regard (2003, President), and the Competition (2007, member).

Film he’s bringing to Cannes: Le Chagrin des Oiseaux (English title: Timbuktu), a French-Mauritanian drama. Actors Abel Jafri and Hichem Yacoubi are joined by a cast of unknown performers. Timbuktu’s plot summary, found on the distributor’s website, is a doozy: “Not far from Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya, and Issan, their twelve-year-old shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences. Kidane and his family are being spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu. But their destiny changes when Kidane accidentally kills Amadou, the fisherman who slaughtered ‘GPS,’ his beloved cow. He now has to face the new laws of the foreign occupants.”

Could it win the Palme? While he has no continental compatriots on the jury, Sissako’s pedigree has brought him to a boiling point: he’s a Competition newcomer for a reason, and his film sounds incredibly heavy. It may pack the emotional punch needed to lift the gold, and if it does, Timbuktu would be Mauritania’s first Palme d’Or. Outside of that, Campion and Co. could very likely go for something equally prestigious, like a directing or Grand Jury prize.

Why you should care: At Cannes 2014 Abderrahmane Sissako is representing oft-neglected African cinema on a world stage, and he’s typically considered one of the most important filmmakers of the entire continent. His latest film also features a location he’s shot before, if you’ll recall the Danny Glover spaghetti western “Death in Timbuktu” featured as a film-within-a-film in Bamako (titled as such to call attention to the tragedies happening daily there). Timbuktu is sure to be an important work, regardless of the prizes it may take home.

Follow Jake Howell on Twitter: @Jake_Howell

Previous Entries:

Tommy Lee Jones

Atom Egoyan

Bennett Miller

Xavier Dolan

David Cronenberg

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Naomi Kawase

Ken Loach

Michel Hazanavicius

Jean-Luc Godard

Bertrand Bonello

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Andrey Zvyagintsev

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