Bamako (2006)

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Bamako is an amazing polemical political film like no other.

Issue-driven drama has rarely been so polemic as it is in this fierce attack on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's role in African poverty.

Sissako's bolt of lightning is how he once again merges spaces: he sets the trial out-of-doors... editing the village's daily events as if they are all a part of the trial's fabric.

A clumsy, talk-heavy and crushingly heavy-handed hybrid. While it may have the best of intentions, Bamako is sometimes hard to watch.

Unlike other recent films about the plight of Africa, Bamako channels its outrage more directly, yet with greater subtlety, by recruiting real-life witnesses to Africa's economic crises.

Free of the indignant self-righteousness of Michael Moore's lowbrow sloganeering, Abderrahmane Sissako's poetic drama offers a clear-sighted examination of Third World economic collapse.

Bamako is a film that grows on you. Its power is subtle and you don't really feel the impact until it's all over. And when it has, its left with you something unshakeably real.

Dramatic features born and bred on the African continent are rare commodities on these shores, and the opportunities they offer can stretch far beyond film appreciation and into the realm of world understanding.