Please join us for this exclusive film screening followed by a panel discussion with
ABDERRAHMANE SISSAKO
Director of Timbuktu
_____
plus special guests
SEKOU KASSE
Permanent Representative of the Republic of Mali to the UN
SIDI MOHAMED BOUBACAR
Permanent Representative of Mauritania to the UN
5:30 - 6:00 p.m. | Registration
6:00 - 7:40 p.m. | Screening
7:40 - 8:30 p.m. | Q+A with Sissako
Screening begins promptly at 6:00 p.m.
Dolby 88 Screening Room
1350 Avenue of the Americas (at West 55th Street)
Lobby Level
New York, NY 10019
ADMISSION
UNA Members: FREE
UNA Student Members: FREE
Guests and Non-Members: $15
2015 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film
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 abruptly in this stunningly rendered film from a master of world cinema.
We are proud to present Abderrahmane Sissako's masterpiece Timbuktu, which is Mauritania's first entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. It has been widely lauded at many film festivals including Cannes, and has been included on many 10 best films lists.
Please join us for this screening as well as a special opportunity to meet Abderrahmane Sissako afterwards for a Q+A session.
Abderrahmane Sissako | Director's Statement
On July 29th, 2012 in Aguelhok, a small city in northern Mali — more than half of which was being occupied by men who were mostly outsiders — an unspeakable crime took place to which the media largely turned a blind eye. A thirty-something couple, blessed with two children, were stoned to death. Their crime: they weren't married…
Aguelhok is not Damascus, nor Tehran. So nothing is said about all this. What I write is unbearable, I know this. I am in no way trying to use shock value to promote a film. I can't say I didn't know and, now that I do, I must testify in the hopes that no child will ever again have to learn their parents died because they loved each other.
I am a filmmaker from one of those far-off countries, countries that do not have the financial means to regularly release many films. Filmmakers who can go ten years without making a film. So when we do make one, it must have a meaning, a universal message, it must alert and concern all of humanity. I want to tell the stories that are not told or are not told enough...
Guest Speakers
ABDERRAHMANE SISSAKO
Abderrahmane Sissako is a film director and producer who has often worked in Mali and France. Sissako is, along with Ousmane Sembène, Souleymane Cissé, Idrissa Ouedraogo and Djibril Diop Mambety, one of the few filmmakers from Sub-Saharan Africa to reach a measure of international influence. His film Waiting for Happiness (Heremakono) was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival official selection under Un Certain Regard, winning the FIPRESCI Prize. His 2007 film Bamako received much attention. Sissako's themes include globalisation, exile and the displacement of people. His 2014 film Timbuktu was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Soon after his birth Sissako's family immigrated to Mali, his father's country, where he completed part of his primary and secondary education. Sissako returned briefly to Mauritania, his mother's land, in 1980. Then he left for Moscow, where he studied cinema at the VGIK (Federal State Film Institute) from 1983 to 1989. Sissako settled in France at the beginning of the 1990s. In addition to feature films and short films, Sissako has served on the jury of the Premiers Plans festival in Angers in January 2007, and on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival later in the same year.
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