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.
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.