A loving desert family is torn apart by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Africa in Abderrahmane Sissako’s poetic social outcry. By Deborah Young The sole representative of African cinema in ...

“Timbuktu Fasso” is from the soundtrack for the film Timbuktu (2014), written and directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. The song “Timbuktu Fasso” was written by Fatoumata Diawara and composed by Diawara ...

The intriguingly unorthodox “Timbuktu,” one of five films vying for a foreign-language Oscar, is a provocative, sometimes satiric drama about the sort of Islamic extremists who make life, especially ...

Sissako gets magnetic performances from the actors playing the beautiful Bedouin family at the heart of the film (pictured below), but he also manages to make the men of Ansar Dine, the jihadist ...

Abderrahmane Sissako confirms his status as one of the true humanists of recent cinema with this stunningly shot and deeply empathetic drama. As in his previous pics (“Bamako,” “Waiting for Happiness” ...

The intriguingly unorthodox Timbuktu, one of five films vying for a foreign-language Oscar, is a provocative, sometimes satiric drama about the sort of Islamic extremists who make life, especially in ...

Born in 19822, Fatoumata Diawara spent her early years in Abidjan in a large family. Her mother is a dancer. His father runs an association of traditional shows. He introduced her to dance and the ...

Swaddled in a tendril of vivid scarves, like fireworks about her face, Fatoumata Diawara nurses an espresso in a corner banquette, all infectious triumph. Outside this cozy café near the Malian singer ...

In one of Timbuktu's first vignettes, jihadists open fire on traditional sculptures, shredding wooden bodies with bullets. It's foreshadowing, of course: Human flesh will later face the same guns. But ...

After the first of a number of slightly predictable but heartfelt intros, in which she promises to give us an Africa beyond the clichés of poverty and mass migration, Fatoumata launches into the first ...