Bamako

Q&A with Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes on Dec. 1. All ticket holders on Dec. 1 are invited to an Opening Night reception at the Furman Galley in WRT beginning at 8:30pm.

Abderrahmane Sissako’s fourth feature is an idiosyncratic legal drama that examines the law as a means of effecting political change. Set in the titular capital of Mali, the film follows some of the city’s residents as they bring an unprecedented lawsuit against a network of international financial powers—namely the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—for exacerbating Africa’s debt crisis through their actions and inaction alike. While witnesses deliver evocative, stirring testimony against the global financial elite in the trial’s courtyard, life goes on outside it, as we spend time with an ensemble of Bamako’s inhabitants getting by amid the conditions wrought by these capitalist juggernauts. This first production by Glover and Barnes’s Louverture company is masterfully filmed by Sissako with warmth, vibrancy, and a deft sense of the relationship between the quotidian and the world-historical.