Abderrahmane Sissako, 2007, 115 min.
In French and Bambara with English subtitles
Screening followed by a discussion with Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Gregory Mann
Set in the Malian capital, Bamako employs a fictional trial to stage a public prosecution of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and ultimately Western capitalism itself, facing charges they have forcibly kept a decolonized Africa impoverished and oppressed. Meanwhile, everyday life unfolds around the proceedings. Through this imagined courtroom, the film interrogates the legacies of colonialism, global inequality, and economic dependency, transforming the trial into a forum for historical reckoning and debate.
Watch the trailer here.
Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Professor Emeritus of French and of Philosophy at Columbia University. His fields of research include the history of logic and philosophy, Islamic philosophy and Sufism, African philosophy and literature, and twentieth-century French philosophy. He is the author of numerous books, including African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude, The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa, Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with Western Tradition, Le fagot de ma mémoire, From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation, Universaliser, and Ubuntu.
Gregory Mann is a Professor in the History Department at Columbia University. A historian of West and francophone Africa, his work has focused largely on Mali and the Sahel in the twentieth century, including both the colonial and the postcolonial periods. His most recent book, Africa and France: a History, is currently in press with Cambridge.
This film is featured in the Maison Française film series History on Trial. The series is curated by Shanny Peer, with contributions by Emmanuel Kattan and Jane Gaines. Additional support for the series is provided by the School of the Arts Film & Media Division, Alliance Program, Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, and Dean of Humanities.
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