DesiAnge A beautiful movie. Absolute masterpiece! I didn't expect it to be , but when i saw it i was charmed as much as i could ever be. I don't think i ll forget it anytime soon. It is like a dream (and a nightmare in the same time) - another world with different rules from ours, but same people. People who wants to be free, to love, to sing, to play soccer....to enjoy life. People who wants it differently.... Peaceful people who remember what was before the jihadists. This is movie which everybody must see.

drhupp This movie was very slow paced, something that swayed me to dislike the film. One of the reasons it was so slow was because not everyone spoke the same language, so there was always a need for a translator in a conversation. This movie takes place in the Middle of the desert in Mali, where there is a group of jihadi extremists who are controlling the area. The extremists run a tight law system that goes too far for no reason, an example being that there is no singing allowed in the city. After a girl was caught singing, she got 80 lashes to the back, quite over the top. But I think that the producers of this film were able to show what a real extremist group would be like, always having guns, enforcing every little thing to the way they see it best. The way the movie ended was sorta random and quick, it didn't give me the closure that I wanted to see. The Dad dies, then the mom shows up and gets shot right away, then after that there's a "high-speed" scooter chase. And then we don't get to see how that ends, which aggravated me a little.

popcorninhell Timbuktu won the Francois Chalais Award at Cannes in 2014 and was nominated for Best Foreign language film at the 2015 Academy Awards. It's easy to see why. Not only is it a beautiful, serene and well- made film but it also has the fortitude to take on radical Islam in a brash, yet compassionate way. The fact that this film and director Abderrahmane Sissako has been readily accepted by the western world is not only evidence that audiences are willing to see films depicting extremism, but are willing to accept a more nuanced version than the caricatures we've conjured in out own minds.There are many stories covering the breadth of Timbuktu, though the main and most powerful tale concerns Kidane (Ahmed) and his family. Kidane, his wife Satima (Kiki) and daughter Toya (Walet Mohamed) live on the outskirts of town as a family of cattle herders. For the most part they're far away from the oppressive world of the Ansar Dine occupation that took over the ancient city of Timbuktu from 2012 to 2013. The only encounters they seem to have is between Jihadist (and driver in training) Abdelkerim (Jafri) who covets Satima. One day a local fisherman kills one of Kidane's herd. From there the Jihadists converge on the family, administering their harsh interpretation of Sharia Law.There are many side stories that decorate the edges of Timbuktu's moral parable. While these stories don't necessarily provide interesting characters they do provide some arresting images. An audacious woman known by the locals as La Chanteuse (Diawara) constantly employs subtle forms of silent protest against the city's occupiers. The simplicity of her protests provide the film with some iconic images. In one scene another woman is given twenty lashes for singing and being in a room with a non-relative man. As she sobs with every stroke of the whip, she begins to sing in a singular act of defiance. Another almost absurd aside includes a group of school children playing soccer without a ball since the sport itself is forbidden.The Jihadists themselves are portrayed as foolish hypocrites; sneaking smoldering puffs of cigarettes smoke and conversing about their favorite soccer teams when no one is watching. When two of them try to enter a mosque with weapons, the local Imam (Cherif) curbs their excesses with sermons on humility, leniency, respect and kindness. Their reactions are often ones of puzzlement, unable to keep up with the Imam's learned discourse.Yet it's moments like these that provide the film's biggest trouble spots. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Sissako explained that he's trying "to speak on behalf of people who are frustrated with this image...this constant degrading image of Islam." To that end Timbuktu is less of the humanist work like his previous Waiting for Happiness (2002) and more like a classroom lecture. Many have latched on to the film's zeitgeist and made comparisons to The Great Dictator (1940). One could no doubt take Chaplin's closing monologue and feel the same sense of erudite pretension. Yet by coming out and saying what the film's about, it stunts the film's natural humanity. We reach points of tragedy, not with a sense of loss but with a narrative coda. One that resembles and argumentative rebuke.The film's discourse also feels unnecessarily chambered when you consider Sissako's larger point. It's easy to charge cruelty and hypocrisy yet the challenge is to examine why the world of Timbuktu is sullied by cruelty and hypocrisy. Issues of displacement, poverty, globalization, colonialism (all of which are familiar themes to Sissako) are completely absent. Nothing is left ambiguous and one could not help but think Timbuktu's international success is predicated on whittling away such themes for the sake of moral clarity. Even Kidane's home-life reeks of the nobility through poverty prosaism that hasn't been in vogue since Maxim Gorky died.Abderrahane Sissako is certainly one of the most talented Cineastes coming out of Africa today. His visual grammar is on par with international contemporaries and his panache for emotional complexity makes him a torchbearer for Cinema's most renowned humanists such as Satyajit Ray, Masaki Kobayashi and Charles Burnett. Thus, Timbuktu ultimately feels like a compromise. The director's desire to connect with a larger (presumably) western audience seems to supersede the film's fertile narrative which is unfortunate. Yet by the merit of the film's imagery and some very potent religious themes, there is forgiveness, there is leniency.

Red_Identity It is a shame that it took me this long to finally seek this film out, I guess when I wanted to watch it back when it was nominated for the Oscar it wasn't as readily available and I just kept waiting more and more. It's a powerful film, filled with ugliness and the disruption of a particular society and a group of people and how they live, but it's also a pretty visually stunning film. The cinematography here is really strong, it resembles a poem or visual story that needs to be seen to be experienced. The drama isn't ever over the top or broad, and instead just harshly realistic. The screenplay really keeps an eye out for the characterization that makes the whole thing work as well as it does.