One of the more prominent filmmakers of new African cinema is Abderrahmane Sissako from Mauritania. His films offer serious, contemplative narratives about the realities facing Africa. He does so with a poetic tone and with beautiful images. He is a softlyspoken man whose true interest seems to be in humanity; with a keen eye for both the fragility and the strength of  human beings. His most well-known and internationally awarded films are Waiting for Happiness (2002), Bamako (2006) and Timbuktu (2014). 

In an interview he tells about the specific challenge of filmmaking in Africa. There are countries that only make one film every 2-5 years. There are many cities in his own country with no cinema at all. At the film festival in Valladolid I saw the documentary film Talking About Trees (2019) made by Suhaib Gasmelbari. Gasmelbari is born and has grown up in Sudan. He tells the story of four aged Sudanese filmmakers who try to revive an old cinema after having had no cinema at all in Sudan for more than thirty years due to dictatorial government and religious fundamentalism. 

Both Sissako and Gasmelbari teach us what cinema means to us, that it is communicating with others. They remind us in a time of iPads and cellphones of the beauty of seeing and experiencing film collectively. They strike me as being very careful with what they say. If you only have one chance every five years to tell your story, what do you want to say and how do you want to say it?

The other day I had the opportunity to see Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness. It is a gentle, poetic film about people in transit, waiting for things to happen to bring them a brighter future. Abdallah is a seventeen-year-old who has been away from his desert hometown and is now visiting his mother before he heads off for Europe. His mind is elsewhere, we feel his loneliness and isolation, neither here nor there rooted. Khatra is a young, energetic orphan who learns the trade of an elderly handyman. After the old man dies, he makes his way to the train trying to get on as a stowaway, only to be kicked off and left aside as a speck in the desert. 

It feels as if Sissako wants to broaden perspectives. These young people in this desert village in Africa offer a mirror to us. At times in our lives we all find ourselves leaving, hoping, feeling fragile, uncertain about the future. We can identify with the feelings that belong to being in a state of transit. As human beings we share both the fragility and the strength while we are waiting for and moving towards happiness. 

RB, Nov 2019

*image posted under fair use of copyright material
 in recommendation of the film

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