Timbuktu

Not being a man of any religiosity at all, the effects seems to me all the more potent when a group of Jihadists arrive in this town and start to impose Sharia law. Now I don't wish to get all political here, but what we see for the next ninety minutes or so offers us some of the most appalling and disturbing scenes I've ever seen in a fact-based film. It's presented in an effective docu-drama style and follows storylines that see the townsfolk fall foul of their uninvited new regime. To add some context, one man gets 20 lashes for playing football - because it is banned. A woman receives many times that for being in a room with another man. Inappropriate laughing is prohibited as are cigarettes for certain people, too. For the men the rule...

Timbuktu is a film of quiet fury, showing how a city famed for its culture is smothered by self-appointed guardians of morality. Abderrahmane Sissako avoids easy sensationalism, instead dwelling on the absurdity and cruelty of daily life under jihadist rule: women punished for singing, men forced into marriages, lives upended by diktats as arbitrary as they are brutal. The tone is restrained, which makes the eruptions of violence and despair cut deeper.

One sequence distils the whole film. Football is banned, so a group of boys play with an invisible ball. They run, feint, pass, score every gesture perfectly timed without a single object on screen. Its funny and joyous, yet heartbreaking, a rebellion powered by imagination alone. That...