Popular reviews

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  Review by kailey 3

  "my penis betrayed me!" is a god-tier line.

  entrancing and powerful and majestic. the shot of Attou's son carrying the egg amid the desert is going to stick with me for a long time.

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  Review by KYK ★★★½ 1

  my penis has betrayed me
  
  
  35mm. BAM.

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  Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★½

  This really put me in another world but thankfully guided me with an opening write-up with some drawn imagery to give you some talisman guidance through this Mali 13th century past with a story that is ripe for interest cause right out of the gate you have a dad trying to track down his son to kill him and a son not knowing why but only guided by his aged mother trying to protect him. Now I am not going to get into the weeds to much on this cause honestly I don't totally have the colloquial knowledge to unpack all this material but I can say that there is some seriously solid imagery that holds weight and a story…

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  Review by Ethan Lyon ★★★★½ 6

  1st Souleymane Cissé

  One of the most remarkable films I've ever seen, one that stubbornly thumbs its nose at the European concepts of cinema to produce something gloriously individualistic. Cissé's film draws on Malian folk legend and the memory of the four century long Malian Empire in his construction of a faintly Oedipal narrative where a son must kill his father, a dangerous sorcerer who worries that said son will be the death of him. Cissé's approach to performance is radically difference to what we in the West understand; the dialogue is less conversation and more a series of chants and declarations, framed immaculately and edited with a slow, heavy rhythm that emphasises the power individual speaker possesses in that…

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  Review by Remobo ★★½ 4

  I bless the runes down in Africa. 

  A spectacularly minimalist African fairy tale where one man’s penis betrays him, and another has two men carry around his “magic pole”…but I’m sure there’s no symbolism there.

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  Review by Graham ★★★

  El Topo: African edition

  I'm not sure what I was expecting from Yeelen, but it wasn't this. Mostly filmed on the savannah of Burkina Faso, it's an incredible tale of magic and sorcery with a similarly wacky vibe to Jodorowsky's films.

  Absolutely mental, but fun nonetheless.

  "An ant on its feet can do more than an elephant lying down."
  - African Proverb

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  Review by Thorkell August Ottarsson ★★★★½ 1

  Day 2. 6th Film, 5th Country: Mali
  of the "May: 30 Days, 30 Countries" Challenge.

  It is clear that Souleymane Cissé is not just any director. He directs this with the confidence and conviction of a master. It is a brilliant piece of cinema and has the power, poetry and rawness of early Herzog. I have to see more by him!

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  Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★★ 2

  More, please. This is a beautifully shot myth on cinema, the creation story for a people that are going to have to deal with a lot of unfairness, but ultimately persevere-it encompasses pointless tragedy and things going wrong, but also a sense that the universe will guide you through, that there are allies in nature, and that those who exploit the world around them for their own egos (and kill albinos) can't escape their fate, while those who accept their fate will create a lasting legacy. It also does that thing I love in Fantasy where the plot gets rolling because of one of those ironic prophecies that's sparked by the villain(?)'s own insecurities over the prophecy, and for what…

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  Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★

  I can't think of many movies that take folk magic at face value or treat it as seriously as this one does. Barravento and Cabeza De Vaca may be the only ones I've seen.

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  Review by Josh Larsen ★★★★ 3

  Yeelen is a distinctly African film, in that it is set well before European incursion on the continent—indeed, in a time and place where Europeans might not even exist. A dramatization of a tale told by the Bambara people of modern-day Mali, Yeelen mixes folklore, natural settings, and religious practice to create an experience—for most North American viewers at least—that is at once as familiar as Arthurian legend and as mystifying as an alien culture. That’s not to say the movie is alienating. Writer-director Souleyman Cisse outlines his young hero’s journey cleanly, punctuating it with lyrical asides that allow us to take in all sorts of natural textures (towers of fire, dry cracked earth, rugged rock walls, and a splashing…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★½

  Directed by Souleymane Cissé, Yeelen observes the adventures of Nianankoro (Issiaka Kanek) a young African man with other-worldly capabilities. It marvellously compounds reality with the strange and mysterious with some dramatic cinematography and an intricate sound design for the duration of its length.  

  Nianankoro's shaman father experiences a revelation where he sees his son causing his demise, and after coming to realise that his father has decided to kill him, Nianankoro treks to his uncle to petition assistance. 

  It's very much a film from Mali with all the cultural unfamiliarity which that encompasses. But it's a far more assessable film than the earlier one I watched today (Ousmane Sembène's Ceddo), as it continually focuses on spiritual contentions which are…

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  Review by Tony (tectactoe) ★★★ 2

  [57]

  Ever wonder what a fantasy film or fairy-tale movie would look like with a budget of approximately seventeen dollars? Look no further! In a fascinating way, the strong juxtaposition between the narrative’s mythical elements - of which there are many - and the compositional rawness make this the most primitive fictional film of all time—yes, even more than all those shoestring-funded, DV/handheld mumblecore pictures, precisely because the contrast between what we’re picturing in our heads (based on text) and what we’re actually seeing is oceanic in size. I mean, when Nianankoro reveals his fetish’s ability to freeze enemies and the nearby attackers are trying their damnedest to remain impossibly still—though the natural sway and twitch of their bodies are…