Events

Cohen Media Group is proud to announce the release of TIMBUKTU, acclaimed director Abderrahmane Sissako’s lyrical, visually arresting drama, a multiple prize-winner at this past year’s Cannes Film Festival.  TIMBUKTU, Mauritania’s official selection for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is scheduled to open on January 28, 2015.

Not far from  the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, proud cattle herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed aka Pino) lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki), his daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed), and Issan (Mehdi Ag Mohamed), 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. Coming into fateful conflict with the fundamentalist rulers of the provincial capital, he has to face the new laws of the foreign occupants. Visually, Timbuktu is a series of wonders and Sissako’s becalmed and sensitive eye for beauty intensifies the absurdity and horror of the film’s quietly unfolding tragedy.

Born in Kiffa, Mauritania, director/writer Abderrahmane Sissako’s family emigrated to Mali when he was a child.  After returning to his mother’s homeland of Mauritania at 19, Mr. Sissako left for Moscow in the early 1980s to study cinema at the prestigious film academy VGIK.  He served on the juries of the Berlin and Cannes Film festivals, and was the jury president at the entrance examination of the famed French film school La Femis. His previous films include the acclaimed Life on Earth, Waiting for Happiness, and Bamako.