Bamako (The Court) (2006) User Reviews

An Essay on African Social Injustice Lifts off the Page

[Jamester · 7/10 · 10 September 2006]

I'm hardly an expert on African economics, or social life, but this story whose political viewpoint is clearly African does what I think a movie should: it presents both sides of an issue -- in this case Mali's financial struggle and whether the World Bank and IMF should be blamed for the distress of the people.

Through a story that revolves around a court case, we see the stories of struggle of a wide range of people: mother, educator, escapee, unemployed person, and the average guy trying to make ends meet but having a difficult time.

For me, it clarified some of the issues and effects of fairly extreme poverty and lack of government prioritization for social services, health and education. It made the argument that a government may be at fault for selling out the country's future at the expense of developing a stronger base.

The bleakness, however does something bigger, or I hope it does -- I hope it gives strength to continue to fight as the producers, I think, would like.

See this. Africa is an important piece of the world and an important piece of the globalization of the world.

Intriguing and humbling without ever coming across as melodramatic.

[johnnyboyz · 7/10 · 20 January 2009]

Mauritanian director and writer Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako will not be for everyone and by everyone I mean the majority of both mainstream American as well as European film-goers. The film is of the kind that borders on documentary in its approach and general feel; people talk for long periods about topics that a lot of us will have perhaps read about here and there in whatever news coverage it's been given in a respective country but few, unless you're an avid follower of African politics and the financial state in Africa, will have had as much exposure to the subject as you get in this film. In general, there are long and detailed monologues on the subject of Africa's, as a continent, financial and general situation. It is a piece of work that teeters between documentation and a sheer, out and out neo-realist piece set amidst the locals going about their business.

The title: 'Bamako', is loud and proclaimed. The word is a proper noun – it is the capital city of Mali, an African country, and that is the tone for the film focusing on a courtroom based discussion regarding the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a corporation set up to help fund developing or underfunded nations. The topic is straight forward: the reason the state of many African nations are in the state they are. You can imagine it being a very personal subject to many-an African director but Sissako handles it very well and it resonates; the film is not about one nation, despite having the capital of a certain nation as its title, but rather the state of a continent as a whole and the director doesn't focus on individual nations but gives everybody a voice.

The courtroom of the title it has been released as here and there is really nothing more than a patch of sandy land in the middle of an urban area. The officials are all dressed smartly and each of them are both French and Caucasian. It's here I think Sissako places the audience into the bodies of these officials, those that are of a 'Western' origin more than anything and those that must stand and listen to the African villagers state their cases to do with living conditions as well as both quality and amount of facilities they have available to them. It's here we feel as naive as the court officials, perhaps as humbled as they are when people give their statements and accounts – some are loud and angry with a woman peeling off all these facts and figures for our benefit whereas others are quieter and more humbling but one such individual cannot say anything at all and this may be the most upsetting for most viewers.

Perhaps there is a certain irony behind the most effective 'statement' being one delivered by someone who doesn't say anything at all, given how the film likes its extended dialogue sequences. But I think that's down to good direction and good writing if anything: the timing of the silence within the piece. Through the statements, we find that the mere area is unhealthy and lacking medicine and places to earn a living, something that should rebound on us when thinking of the bigger picture and how this is one area in Mali we're dealing with, despite the hearing's overall link to the continent.

One cannot talk about the film without mentioning the bizarre manner in which it veers off out of the world it's taken so much time in establishing and into something else. About half way through the film, from memory, we begin watching a film within a film – a daft looking Western starring Danny Glover which I suppose acts as the film's anchor around which the theme revolves. The western film is entitled 'Death in Timbuktu', a scathing reminder that 'death' is indeed happening all the time in Timbuktu, a town in Mali, more down to the malnutrition than trigger happy cowboys. It sees American and French actors/characters struggling to deal with their surroundings which is a wired hybrid of the Old West and a typical African village with sandy terrain, huts and everything else. The pit-stop could be seen as a metaphor for Americans, the French and Western economic powers in general struggling to deal with a 'problem' in Africa as lots of really unnecessary deaths keep happening – again, in real life it's not death by a bullet as much as it is poor quality conditions.

What I like about Bamako more than, for instance, 'Waking Life' is its approach. We're not being talked down to here and we're not following some daft, trippy sequence of events that shows off what the latest computers are capable of. Instead, we have a real situation being presented to us and arguments established before events developed. This isn't a lecture or a 'talking down to' of the audience, this is reality made by someone who's been there and is producing a film that doubles as a statement. It won't be a film for everyone but the loose narrative to do with a breakup between two people offers us a fitting conclusion, an individual reduced to tears as the emotion floods to the surface as they realise not only their life but the verdict surrounding the hearing is in a purgatory and the only outcomes are two extremes either way.

the most stylish and and politically charged film since Godard's Tout Va Bien

[jared-micah-johnson · 8/10 · 3 December 2008]

The film Bamako acts as a stylish docudrama covering the issue of the "African debt," along with other political turmoil, and daily Mali life in a quite brilliant marriage of the two in a storyline of a failing marriage coming to a close as a heated trial takes place in the courtyard outside of their home.

Watching the film, we witness a debate between parties over the accumulated debt owed to the World Bank, IMF, and other "foreign aid" and the subjugating and anti-progressive cycle, in which they are now stuck, taking place in a courtyard of Bamako, Mali. The people of the court consist of both actors and actual activists (a style of mixed film-making innovated by Werner Herzog and continually popularized by Harmony Korine). The trial, performed in the traditionally Western means of democracy, takes place in the midst of surviving African tradition and culture. Director Sissako further implements with increased power his argument against the discussed globalization with this reconciliation and at times even presents the hilarity of their coexistence (i.e. - the fact this is in a courtyard and not a courtroom, the elderly man who expects to be heard in his culture without permission to speak by a judge, the toddler's squeaking shoes sounding off throughout eloquent speeches).

One of the most interesting creative decisions of the film-making was the stylish inclusion of a film within the film, an ironic western starring Danny Glover, also a producer of the film, and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. Here again Sissako makes multiple uses of an item, here with paralleling metaphors of pillaging bad guys as well as humorous parody of non-American westerns (popularized in Cambodia and Thailand (see Tears of the Black Tiger, a homage to Thai westerns in the 1950s), though I am unsure if this is truly a popular genre of Mali). Sissako has also admitted that he chose a multi-ethnic cast for the western in illustrating that it was not solely the West to be blamed for the troubles of Africa. I also see that many of the other users' comments show that they missed the intent of this scene, possibly because they don't expect such leveled humor from primitive Africa (racists!).

As a film geek, I could continue to shower the film in technical praise: the documentary style of filming adding a greater objectivity to the story, the beautiful shots like the man reclining beneath the rusty amplifier, sounding the song of the old man in court, the silent testimony of the schoolteacher, etc. However, I will stay objective in discussion of the film's politics. The film's points are clear. The foreign solution to poverty increased Mali's poverty due to privatization and lost government jobs. The foreign solution to its economic growth has hindered such growth by creating a structure dependent on exports and suffocating it with the accumulating interest of the debt. The sad excuse for a reduction of the debt is laughable as a solution. In other words, the cowboys were shooting aimlessly at nothing.

Justified anger and fragrant beauty

[cliffhanley_ · 6 March 2007]

Dusk. A robed man walks into town, leading us into the story. From here, if you haven't read a review, or a synopsis, you will be quite baffled.

Bamako is a courtroom drama, shot mostly in the director's old family courtyard with a cast of judges, 'witnesses' including professional lawyers, actors and non-professional locals. Sissako says that he filmed the trial, in which the World bank and the IMF are in the dock, as he would a documentary. Scenes could not be interrupted, even when a wedding party passes through the yard, all four cameras and the sound man were on camera. There was even a 'cameraman', Falai, who makes videos for the police and for weddings. This forms the main body of the film, as witnesses stand up and make their accusations of neo-colonialism, including the rousing, impassioned and eloquent speech made by a lawyer (William Bourdon) against the economic policies of the international financial agencies, one witness who, once on the stand, finds himself unable to put his feelings into words and the elder who sings his evidence, with a timeless voice, the living antecedent of the blues and the call of the muezzin. Sissako gave his witnesses, some of whom had been victims of the 'structural adjustments' of the World Bank and the IMF, a lot of freedom in testifying, accusing or defending, so they were able to put all their genuine feelings into their 'testimonies'.

In parallel to the courtroom, lives are being lived outside: even before we get to court a local singer, the goddess Mele (Aissa Maiga) sings to camera but just as the band kicks in there is a cut to a sick child in bed, her mother unable to afford medicine. Then there are women dying cloth, a plot with a gun, the wedding, Mele's marriage to Chaka (Tiecoura Traore) getting shaky, a little boy (born too late) sadly watching the goddess doing her hair and kids watching TV, where there is a B western, Death in Timbuktu. All these sub-plots were intended to be parables but the western looks most like one - the cowboys shooting down innocents until one of them, Danny Glover, turns on his fellows, one played by Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman. With the multi-ethnic cowboy sequence, Sissako says he wanted to point out that the 'West' isn't solely to blame for Africa's troubles.

The tale is rounded off with another visit to the night-club, where Mele is allowed an entire song, tearfully at first but triumphant in the end. It doesn't wind up in neat Hollywood style, though: even during the final song the camera cuts away to the sober 'reality' of life outside, followed by a piece of drama that seems to sum up both the court-room "J'accuse" polemics and the little parables. Being the wordy film that it is, although its sentiments are right on, it felt at least as long as it was. Perhaps a second look would feel better; such a mixture of justified anger and fragrant warmth is rare. CLIFF HANLEY

Ordinary lives intersect at a trial in Bamako

[Tweekums · 7/10 · 29 May 2018]

This film is set in a small courtyard in the Malian capital, Bamako. A trial is taking place; on the one side those representing the ordinary people of Africa on the other those representing the organisations they hold responsible for the national debts that keep the people impoverished. While the trial progresses we meet various characters; some are witnesses others are ordinary people going about their lives.

This is an interesting film even though we know such a trial would never take place and if it did it wouldn't be in a public courtyard... that isn't really a problem though. The case raises some important issues about how African nations are treated however it does feel too polemic at times; this is especially the case when a French lawyer rails against the World Bank, the IMF and the west in general towards the end... the earlier more personal testimonies from affected Africans felt far more relevant. I liked the little details away from the details of the trail; a policeman has his gun stolen while he had a nap; a singer plans to move to Senegal and locals watch 'Death in Timbuktu', a pseudo-spaghetti western starring Danny Glover... this section was particularly inventive as we switch to watching this film within the film for several minutes. Overall I'd say this was fairly interesting but I felt it would have been more interesting if we'd seen more of people's ordinary lives and a little less of the trial.

Innocent beauty

[sergepesic · 7/10 · 28 November 2011]

It is impossible to resist this little innocent beauty of a movie. The heartbreak of today's Africa is overwhelming. Wars, violence, immense poverty, AIDS and perhaps the worst of all, hopelessness. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of a tunnel. " Bamako" is a very unusual movie. Even its description is inaccurate. The mock trial of the World Bank, IMF and other immoral bloodsuckers takes the most of the movie. Little personal tragedy of Mele and Chaka brought upon by the despair of the everyday Mali, is unfortunately just a sideline, never fully explained or told. Because of that this powerful movie seems more like a documentary or a political tirade.

Local color and argumentation in a passionate polemic set in Mali

[Chris Knipp · 9/10 · 27 September 2006]

As recently as Ousmane Sembene's 2004 Moolaadé we saw a sort of African town meeting: such spirited democratic palavers are a feature of African local life. In Bamako, also known as The Court, Sisako has staged a mock trial of the IMF, the World Bank, and the other international financial institutions run by the rich countries that have perhaps contributed to the impoverishment and demographic ravaging of contemporary Africa more than they have helped the continent. This event takes place in the middle of a big busy square in a section of the capital of Mali, Bamako.

There is a whole panoply of characters – a beautiful queen bee (an example of the grace and poise of African women), Melé (Aissa Maiga) and her husband Chaka (Tiecoura Traore). Melé's a popular singer whose marriage is disintegrating and two of her spirited songs are integrated into the film. People watch TV, and the director ironically injects into his film a "western" set in Timbukto, in which incongruous white men as well as Palestinian director Elia Suleiman and Bamako's producer Danny Glover shoot each other. The effect is grotesque, but that's the point: why should Africans be watching TV westerns? Elsewhere on the earthy "set" of the film there's a young man, also beautiful, who lies dying inside a nearby building with no medical care. There are many children, some playing about, some being breast-fed. A couple marry, and the festivities interrupt the trial. There's a flinty gatekeeper who decides who can come in and who can't. There's a traditional griot who's one of the "witnesses" and who ends the proceedings with a hypnotic chant (not translated, but strangely stirring and stunning). There's another "witness" – a former schoolteacher – so hopelessly demoralized he refuses to utter a word; a sound recordist; a video photographer who says he prefers to take pictures of the dead because they're more real; and many authentic-looking extras, including a variety of dried-up tough young-old (or ageless) stick-men, all of them coming and going.

You get a vivid sense from all this, which is rhythmically inter-cut with the trial itself, of the harmonious seeming chaos of African village life; the color, the beauty and dignity of the people. You get above all a sense that life goes on. There are two white men on the "stage" of the trial, one an advocate for the international organizations (Roland Rappoport) and the other (William Bourdon) eloquently speaking for the African people and for socialism who concludes that the first world should be sentenced "to community service" "forever." Eloquent though he is, a Malian woman lawyer who speaks after him (Aissata Tall Sall) is more touching.

Like An Inconvenient Truth, Bamako's trial presents facts and arguments of enormous present day importance – this time surrounding not global warming and the disintegration of the earth's eco-system, but another set of the planet's major problems: the social imbalances, the domination of the many by the few; poverty and disease, "terrorism" used to excuse world domination, the richest nations' doing harm while seeming to do good; the ravages of globalization, the privatization of natural resources down to land and water, perhaps ultimately to air; the national debts of poor nations collected by the economic organizations of the rich ones, and thereby preventing the poor ones from gaining any ground against the ravages of poverty and underdevelopment. .

This is powerful stuff. Sisako is, in theory, presenting both sides of the story, though it is obviously which side he is on and which side is in the majority on screen. This is polemic. The international organizations obviously aren't overtly setting out to destroy Africa – are they? It is preaching; but it is done in a rich and colorful and dramatically moving way. The film picked up a US distributor during the New York Film Festival. It's not clear whether the way the print was presented was accurate. This seemed to be a projection of a digital copy that lost the surface beauty of the original. The colors of Jacques Besse's photography were beautiful, but dimmed. In French and Bambara (the Malian language).

stylized rather than realism

[sjr5-1 · 6/10 · 7 October 2006]

I think it would help to know a fair amount about Mali and the problems caused by the Western financial institutions -- the World Bank, the IMF -- to appreciate this movie. I wanted to like it more than I did, but too much seemed mysterious. First of all, the "trial" of the IMF and the World Bank was being held in a courtyard, what appeared to me to be the family courtyard, not a public square, and a guard at the gate would let people in or not depending on whether their name was on a list he had. Why? People outside the courtyard could listen to the proceedings via loudspeakers, but many of them appeared to ignore the speeches and went about their business.

One of the houses opening into the courtyard belongs to a nightclub singer and her husband, who seems to be unemployed. Quite a few times she comes out of the house while the court is in session to ask a young man to lace up the back of her dress. Why this intrusion of the private into the (semi)public? (The director was at the screening I saw and said he filmed in the courtyard of the home where he grew up.)

The witnesses, who report on the devastation that modernization has often brought to their lives because they've had no say on it, are very moving, especially the man who comes to the witness stand and cannot even speak. Also moving is the old man, the griot, chanting his accusations, which as noted by another viewer, are not translated. (The director explained this by saying that the griot is speaking a southern dialect that the people in the city don't understand.) But the photojournalist who says he prefers to film funerals because the dead speak the truth is more enigmatic. Perhaps the photojournalist is a stand-in for the director, which would explain the sudden, shocking ending. His silent video of a funeral left me feeling bewildered rather than energized to do something about the awful situation many African nations and people are now in.

Fabricated Form, True Content

[gentendo · 9/10 · 2 November 2008]

Bamako is a deeply personal docudrama that illuminates the destitute conditions of African people living in Mali. The story revolves around a village mock trial where African citizens are privileged to voice their political frustrations against a jury of bipartisan judges. Many of these frustrations deal with major social epidemics that Mali suffocates from, including: healthcare, education, poverty, national debt, privatization and disease. In this sense, the story is simple in its structure, yet the issues discussed by the citizens are vastly complex.

It was rewarding to hear the testimonies of the citizens transcend the illiterate stereotype of Africans. Though the majority of them use powerful rhetoric to emphasize and provide solutions to the problems their country faces, there were two testimonies in particular that really stood out as powerful demonstrations of their impoverishment. The man who is silent and the man who sings; both convey a unique message that represents the same underlying theme—social plagues.

The man who gives a silent testimony is a type of the many who suffer with neglected education. His weary eyes, depressed lips and resonating silence speak louder than any eloquent words could do; as if his body language cries, "I am the consequence of social malnourishment. Please give me the opportunity to be nourished like others." The man who sings in an unknown tongue provides commentary on a sort of meta-political-level. Let me explain what I mean by this.

The entire film is very verbose; it is not aesthetically pleasing for the eye as it is more so just a lot of spoken words for the ear. It requires a lot of mental exertion and contemporary socio-economic knowledge to really understand what these people are talking about. With all of this heavy, didactic conversation and exchange of intonated words, the issues talked about would seem completely arbitrary to someone who was not educated. In fact, the conversation would seem alien—like a jumbling mess of chaotic noises and sounds. The man who sings his testimony also appears alien to those who listen. He is merely personifying the chaos of political jargon he hears through an artistic expression of music. He, too, is plagued by a lack of education; his song enters his listener's hearts on a level that is both metaphysical and political.

Overall, the citizens of Mali hide no pretense from where their problems arise, but link much of their pauperization to corporate corruption in the West. Western ideals and social reforms that are inevitably forced upon their economy make Malians rightfully jaded towards the World Bank, WTO, G8 and other Western influences. The richer countries around the world feed like parasites upon the African economy, pushing them deep into debt, refusing to give financial aid until they conform to the Western ideal of privatization, and ultimately drowning them in a sea of tyranny.

I think the filmmakers choose to shoot this film like a documentary because it adds an objective lens to the reality of what these people actually suffer from. These issues are not fabricated to glamorize some type of Hollywood agenda, but are real-life situations involving real-life people, and they deserve the respect to be listened to in a real court of law. Sadly, however, they are not privileged with such a luxury. With filmmakers who care about their situation, they are able to fabricate the form of a courthouse, yet the content that is exchanged inside is painfully true.

The film intercuts several narrative sketches throughout the mock trial, giving examples of the types of lives the Malians live. One story focuses on the tension created between a father's temptation to leave his wife and child in order to pursue financial stability elsewhere, while another focuses on the overall idle state of the citizens who hopelessly sit around listening to politics through a speaker. The sense of despair in both stories comes in direct consequence of Africa's relationship to the corrupting West. The reason why Africa hurts as much as she does is because of the neglect and maltreatment that larger, dominating countries have subjected her to.

One particular scene that demonstrates Africa's ill-feelings towards the West is shown through the film, Death at Timbuktu. The film shows cowboys come into a foreign town and essentially rape, murder and pillage the people of their goods. Why?—because they have the power to do so. This film seemed to suggest the brutality of Western Capitalism. How large, domineering and privatized corporations come into small, submissive and frail countries like Africa and essentially do exactly what the cowboys in the film did—exploit and corrupt.

Both films—Bamako and the film inside Bamako, Death at Timbuktu—seem to have a slight sense of propaganda behind them in order to awaken the injustices done to Africans, and call for equal treatment, opportunity and overall justice.

An important Issue That Deserves a Much Better Forum

[rddj05 · 2/10 · 15 December 2009]

This film has it's heart in the right place, but unfortunately, it isn't much of a film. It is more of a documentary under the guise of a narrative. Bamako is basically a newspaper op-ed piece put on celluloid. However, your average well-researched op-ed piece is far more cogent and concise than anything presented here. The filmmaker is trying to relay to the viewer the hardships of African life, in particular the country of Mali, due to the unethical practices of the IMF, G8, and World Bank, by using the setting of a mock trial against the aforementioned. There is an extra 10 minutes dispersed throughout the film that makes a half-hearted attempt at a narrative plot, and a bizarre Hollywood Western-style shootout scene, where the director seems quite pleased with his own cleverness (hence, the frequent Godard comparisons).

Of course, as the film begins, what and who is on trial is never explained, but as we know by now, the French refuse to spoon-feed their audience.

There are many impassioned arguments made, but they are often long-winded, delivered in a shrill monotone (one that becomes quite easy to tune out after awhile), and very light on specifics. The last point is the most frustrating of all since there is a very well-reasoned specific case to be made against the institutions on trial here. Unfortunately, all we get in 2 hours is that the IMF and G8 are evil oppressors and should forgive 3rd-World debt. We are given no more than the occasional hint to the specific reasons why the organizations on trial are guilty, but never a clear case. The mock-trial arguments and the footage of the surrounding village makes the suffering of these African residents clear, but one wonders why we must sit through 2 hours of it, when a far more precise picture could be painted in a 20-minute Newsweek article, or Bill Moyers episode. In the end, there is something very important to be said on this issue, it simply isn't presented very well, or very clearly, in this pretentious, indulgent piece.

Worthy and very watchable...

[tony-camel · 9/10 · 5 March 2007]

The film is set in the titular capital of Mali, home to a beautiful young singer, Mele (Aissa Maiga), and her husband, Chaka (Tiecoura Traore), who are in the process of splitting up. But while they function as Bamako's nucleus, the warring couple disappear for huge swathes of the film, making way, improbably, for a court room set up in Chaka and Mele's garden.

The court, it transpires, pits the people of Bamako against such international institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the Word Bank, who are charged with bringing Africa to its knees with national debt. To back up their case, the people fall back on a raft of statistics, such as the 50 million African children who are slated to die in the next five years. Meanwhile normal life goes on in Bamako in the shape of women dyeing fabric and Mele and Chaka's embittered squabbling.

Esoteric as it sounds, Bamako brings Africa's plight to life by dint not just of the film's witnesses but some stunning cinematography and an engaging, understated approach that vilifies the West yet never rants and raves.

Good Points, but Dubiously pitched and Aesthetizised

[za-andres · 5/10 · 14 March 2007]

Bamako is more a PBS special than a flat out film. It chronicles a trial in which the World Bank is on trial itself. The film is quite anti Bush-era corporate interests (IMF, World Bank, and G8 are among the villains name-checked), but through the film (I don't even know what it is, a doc. or a film) comes the film maker's true anger which is surprisingly stimulated. In between the quasi-entertaining court-room arguments and the callous shots of town, there isn't much room to inhale pure film making. (There's even a bizarre mock-movie staring Danny Glover as in assassin in a haphazard African town.) And yet, despite the film's slog, there's something in Bamako that keeps it quietly vital, making it a true case of moral politics but pretty much a slog of a film.

Documentary/Film not for the narrow minded, not for the fanatics

[gryspnik · 9/10 · 11 April 2007]

I had no idea what I was getting into when I went to watch this film. I can't tell much without giving away what the movie is all about. I will only say that the "acting" is just perfect, as long as it is not acting. People are mostly activists who actually speak out the truth. The movie is highly symbolic and we have to understand that the director is not trying to be realistic or straightforward. The trial that is taking place in a regular house yard, is surrounded by the everyday lives of the people of Bamako. The result is moving, beautiful and awakening experience. Especially for those who are not very familiar with the situation in Africa and don't know or don't want to know what the West is doing to billions of people around the world in order to maintain our level of useless consumption, it will be an eye opening experience. I absolutely recommend this movie.

One of a kind - truly!

[youmike · 10/10 · 21 December 2007]

As a South African, I have just been riveted by this film. It is not an entertaining film. Thought provoking would be a better description.

Though made a year before, it throws light on what the Bali Conference was all about. The theme of the film - what the first world has done and continues to do to Africa - is of the utmost importance and the device used by the director to get his message across is just appropriate. It's just not possible to describe what you will see - just see it. If you watch it, you must see the interview with the director, for it helps to put the whole extraordinary film into perspective. He trained in Russia you can see the influence of Eisenstein and other Russian directors. I've deliberately not talked much about what you will see. The element of surprise is central to the success of the film.

Death in Timbuktu

[tieman64 · 3 March 2011]

Abderrahmane Sissako directs "Bamako", a film whose title refers to the capital city of Mali.

Beginning at dawn, "Bamako" is an allegory in which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are put on trial for destroying Mali (and by extension continental Africa). Here, lawyers, civilians and civil leaders all act as either prosecutors or defence attorneys.

The film eventually becomes a damning indictment of both the IMF and the World Bank. Fingers are pointed at the World Trade Organization, the G8, and the "pay or die" mentality of the West, all of which have helped lock Africa into a vicious circle of debt. 40 percent of the continent's annual budget, we learn, now goes toward repayments. These repayments are themselves endless, as interest rates are forever escalating.

To make matters worse, "borrowed aid money" comes attached to all manners of stipulation. End result: aid is used not for the creation of jobs for locals, but for the betterment of multinational companies who simply do and seize what they wish. Meanwhile, all the continent's public institutions and social services are being sold off to the highest bidders, who then go on to charge illiterate locals for basic amnesties (food, water, education, health-care etc). This new form of Colonialism, the film shows, breeds debt, forces aid "conditionalities" and always results in economic restructuring and widespread privatisation.

Before it ends, the film touches upon the threats the IMF and World Bank have become adept and dishing out. Such threats ensure that the world is open for the "free movement" of certain people, but not Africans, who are swiftly sent back home should they try to emigrate. Likewise, the film touches upon the way the World Bank threatens to withdraw financial support should its demands not be met, and the various sanctions and crippling "free trade" laws routinely forced upon the continent.

The film was shot on a low budget, but it's paced well and its dialogue manages to grip. Unlike, say, "12 Angry Men", the film occasionally breaks away from its claustrophobic court setting to meditate upon Africa's gentle beauty. Though at times poetic, the film is also didactic, too polemical and preaches to its own choir. It was a big hit in France.

7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

Possibly the most boring film I've ever seen

[Sam B · 1/10 · 15 April 2007]

If this film won the Lumiere Award for Best French-Language Film, then what kind of garbage is coming out of France these days??

The subject matter is an important one -- how the African economies are kept as economic hostages by the international organizations that are supposed to be helping them, namely the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. About 40% of the governmental budgets of several African nations go to payment of Western debt, while their people suffer from disease, dehydration and illiteracy.

... but the subject matter was treated in the most dry manner that could be conceived by man -- dryer than the Sahara that surrounds the country of Mali in which this film takes place. More monotone and action-lacking than any documentary I've ever seen (and I'm a fan of the genre), one "witness" after another comes forward in this "trial" that is "captured" on film that condemns the World Bank & IMF. Some critics may site the colorful visual asides within the film, but they were out of place and had no complementary soundtrack when they were on the screen. They belonged better in a coffee table book than in this film.

Even the characters in the film say something like "This trial is boring" and "When will it be over?" Everyone in the theater laughed. Were those people on the screen reading our minds??

Danny Glover had a brief appearance in this film. It is a televised movie within "Bamako" and it was set within Morocco or Mali. It was also more ridiculous than any spaghetti-Western I've ever tried to avoid. The only redeeming part of these five wasted minutes was where a Caucasian bad guy accidentally shoots an African woman carrying a baby and shows no remorse whatsoever. Perhaps it was to symbolize the insensitivity of the World Bank and how it is unintentionally killing Africans.

And one last technical parting shot, the subtitles were difficult to read with so much light colors on the screen and not enough black outline to the subtitles themselves.

I've already summarized the movie for you. Don't be fooled by the hype. No need to see this film. You'll never get these two hours back in your life.

Need to be heard

[bachrabb · 8/10 · 18 January 2008]

I've been really surprised by this movie, It's not entertaining (narration mode very personal) and that's difficult to accept for many people.

This movie is an alert that things are going too far in Africa in general and in Mali in particular.

Intelligently done with many links and references to the international behavior in front of money and poverty. The glance through the cowboy movie or the interaction of the 'neighborhood' with the court to echo the speeches and how people believe in the 'trial'.

I do recommend this movie to give a chance to African film makers to raise their voice in front of the "collecting_money_at_all_costs" machine that became IMF or the World Bank

Boring, preachy propaganda

[bobunf · 1/10 · 27 October 2007]

Endless repetition about the evil World Bank, IMF, Globalization, and the Americans are blamed for all of Africa's problems—and the movie is long, about two hours, but it seems longer. The French actually occupied Mali, the country in which the movie takes place, for centuries, but are only peripheral bad guys.

One doesn't learn enough about any of the characters to really care what's happening to them—they are completely marginal to the preaching, which goes on and on and on. There's no plot, no character development, no humor (except for a few pokes at Bush and Wolfowitz, but that's almost cheating it's so easy) and the production values are mediocre—no redemption there.

It is amazing that a movie can spend two hours preaching about such a big topic and convey utterly zero real information. The Irish ballad "I was dying, and then the famine came" has more content.

The movie is boring, the sub-titles are tough to read, there is no real content about the subject of the film, and the propaganda is relentless.

Skip this one.

Didactism run amok

[Buddy-51 · 3/10 · 22 February 2009]

Abderrahmane Sissako may have known what he was doing when he made "Bamako," but the rest of us can just sit back in mystification and confusion trying to figure out what that purpose might have been.

The nominal "plot" involves a young African singer who's planning on leaving her unemployed husband to find work in the city. But far more of the screen time is taken up with what the publicists for the film describe as "a mock trial against key financial institutions" dealing "with the overwhelming economic hardships of Africa." That's all well and good, I suppose, but when the arguments and ideas are put forth in as undramatic and pedantic a way as they are here, they lose both force and impact. Put another way, if the director had found the means to actually incorporate issues such as the injurious effect of colonialism on the African people and the problem of African debt into anything even remotely resembling a compelling storyline, the film might have achieved the intellectual and emotional resonance it now so clearly lacks.

The topics the movie is dealing with may be relevant and important, but trying to pass off what amounts to two hours worth of speechifying as an actual, honest-to-God movie is not likely to garner much of an audience for one's message.

Sound and Fury

[roedyg · 5/10 · 10 May 2013]

Bamako is about an outdoor government hearing in Mali, loosely to "try" the World Bank and the IMF. The "expert" witnesses are ordinary citizens, who appear to have no particular relevant experience or expertise. The testimony consists of emotional rants, that would not be tolerated in any hearing I have ever seen. Obviously, the court has no jurisdiction to punish the World Bank. The whole premise makes no sense.

Almost the entire movie consists of various people testifying to the hearing about how much they dislike the World Bank. They give precious few juicy details of exactly what the World Bank did.

The movie is very long and quite tedious, full of sound and fury.

The appeal of the the movie is the large cast of characters testifying and the reaction shots of the audience. The people are remarkably photogenic. You want to stare and stare. They are so beautiful and so unusual.

The main tension in the movie is that a gun goes missing. You know at some time someone is going to shoot someone for some motive. It eventually happens, but you are left in the dark about the details.

The movie is in Mali and French with English subtitles, though in the climatic scene there are no subtitles. You focus purely on the Malian poetic singing oratory, not knowing just what is being said.

You come out the end with a strong distaste for the World Bank, even if the witnesses never clearly articulate just what they did. The results of the Bank's actions are obvious.