Thursday, April 19th - 7:00pm - Riverview Theater Actor/Executive Producer Danny Glover Scheduled to Appear!   Opening night gala to follow at Riverview Wine Bar Opening Night Film and Gala tickets   Director: Abderrahmane Sissako   “I have never seen a film quite like Bamako, Abderrahmane Sissako’s seething, complicated and disarmingly beautiful investigation of Africa’s social, economic and human crises. The agony of Africa has been explored, and exploited, in several high-profile recent documentaries and fictional features, from God Grew Tired of Us, about the “lost boys” of Sudan, to Blood Diamond and The Constant Gardener. Bamako is something different: a work of cool intelligence and profound anger, a long, dense, argument that is also a haunting visual poem.” - A. O. Scott (N.Y. Times)

Set in a courtyard in a poor section of Bamako, Mali’s capital, West Africa, magistrates in robes sit at a table, taking notes and shuffling through files as they listen to testimony from local witnesses and advocates, on the state of the continent itself.

Meanwhile, around the court life goes on. A couple gets married, women dye fabric, and so on. For laughs, there is even a mock Western incongruously shot in Timbuktu, in which tongue-in-cheek cowboys (played by the likes of executive producer Danny Glover and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman) shoot it out on African soil.

The warm, gorgeous colors of Mali are captured in Jacques Besse’s delightful, eye-catching cinematography. Africa’s great new music sounds are heard via Aissa Maiga’s opening and closing song numbers (sadly, left untranslated in the subtitles) and a soul-piercing chant executed by veteran Zegue Bamba. Executive producers, Danny Glover, Joslyn Barnes.

“Sissako hits a high note with this warm winner” - Deborah Young, Variety

Cast: Aïssa Maïga, Tiécoura Traoré, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Balla Habib Dembélé, Djénéba Koné, Hamadoun Kassogué, William Bourdon, Mamadou Kanouté, Gabriel Magma Konate, Aminata Traoré, Danny Glover, Elia Suleiman, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jean-Henri Roger, Zeka Laplaine 

In French and Bambara with English subtitles. Mali/USA/France, 2006, 115 Minutes 

Presented by: Riverview Wine Bar