On Set: Abderrahmane Sissako’s ‘Timbuktu’

Cast members: "We want that film to enlighten our people’s situation, we, the real hostages of that crisis."

Image of Abderrahmane Sissako by Arnaud Contreras.

In January 2014,I spent more than 3 weeks in the southeast of Mauritania on the set of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (nominated for an Oscar tonight). I was not there to do a “Making of …” My aim was to continue my Sahara Rocks! photo series, and to produce a radio documentary for Radio France – France Culture. Abderrahmane’s decision to shoot his film in such a dangerous area was a challenge, but good for the Sahel region. I wanted to bear testimony about this project and to meet the cast and crew. Many of them are refugees from the North Mali crisis still living in M’Berra refugee camp. During the shooting, the crew from the north and the south of Mali talked a lot about the war. Tuaregs, Bambaras, Arabs, Songhoys were discovering each other, exchanging their views on the situation and on their favorite football teams. Some of them were in Timbuktu during the jihadist occupation, and that film, the moments between two sequences, gave them the opportunity to share their stories with Malians from the south and with me. All of them want the film to be seen all around the world, and many told me the same thing : “We want that film to enlighten our people’s situation, we, the real hostages of that crisis.”

 

Further Reading

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.

From Naija to Abidjan

One country is Anglophone, and the other is Francophone. Still, there are between 1 to 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d’Ivoire today.

De Naïja à Abidjan

Un pays est anglophone et l’autre est francophone. Quoi qu’il en soit, entre 1 et 4 millions de personnes d’origine nigériane vivent aujourd’hui en Côte d’Ivoire.