Timbuktu 2014

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: "Timbuktu" deserves every accolade it gets. Read more

Jay Weissberg, Variety: In the hands of a master, indignation and tragedy can be rendered with clarity yet subtlety, setting hysteria aside for deeper, more richly shaded tones. Abderrahmane Sissako is just such a master. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: The kind of mature polemical filmmaking that can't help but seem singular, because few political-issue-type directors try it, and even fewer get it right. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "Timbuktu" is a terrific film, a quiet work of savage truth. Read more

Peter Keough, Boston Globe: Sissako achieves the daunting task of humanizing the villains by playing on audience expectations and preconceptions. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The rebels are too flatly characterized for the religious conflict to deepen, and Sissako's other main story line, tracing a deadly feud between a fisherman and a cattle farmer, adds little to the movie's political thrust. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Jihadism is perpetually ablaze in the news, but the Mauritanian movie Timbuktu, a nominee for the best foreign film Oscar, gives those who suffer its condemnations a searingly human face. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: The performances are hushed and memorable. Cinematographer Sofian El Fanicaptures the beauty of this desert land. Amine Bouhafa's score is its own act of gorgeous grace and defiance. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This is the clash of ancient and modern, of rulers and ruled, of rabid dogma and the joys of daily life. It is a portrait of the ugly folly of imposed ideology, a too-common condition for far too many. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: Even though the atrocities committed by radical jihadists dominate the headlines and airwaves, few in the West know what it's like to live under their reign. Timbuktu...is a moving, haunting and beautifully shot peek behind the closed cultural curtain. Read more

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: Dazzling and morally devastating ... Read more

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: Timbuktu is a hard film to forget and once again brings Sissako to the center stage of African cinema. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: A provocative, sometimes satiric drama about the sort of Islamic extremists who make life, especially in the outer reaches, so treacherous these days. Read more

Ethan Gates, The New Republic: Abderrahmane Sissako's sad, handsome film is a response, a supplement, and a protest to the horrors that flash by on the news. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Elegantly artful, maddeningly truthful. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: The release of "Timbuktu" could not be more timely, although the sad truth is that, nowadays, almost any time would do. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: [Sissako] has made a film of unforgettable anger, yet tempered his outrage with humor, compassion and visual poetry. Read more

David Edelstein, NPR: A film that's a mix of tones, of satire and melodrama and tragedy, that somehow jells. Read more

Graham Fuller, New York Daily News: This unforgettable tragi-comedy shows a cross-section of ordinary Mali people trying to live normally while being harassed by swaggering jihadists toting Kalashnikov rifles. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: An unflinching, quietly furious exploration of life under radical Islamist rule. It also makes a point about power that even nonextremist, democratically elected leaders would do well to keep in mind. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: Avoiding stereotypes, the movie shrinks larger political and religious battles down to the people of a desert town - city dwellers and nomadic Tuareg people out in the dunes - being forced to change by a handful of halfhearted oppressors. Read more

Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer: A transcendent political poem as intellectually rigorous as it is beautiful. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: An extraordinary accomplishment, a heartbreaking, visually spectacular and largely accessible work from a cinematic master who is more than ready for international attention. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Timbuktu" is culturally deep, visually ravishing, utterly heartbreaking work. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Director Abderrahmane Sissako, a Muslim from neighboring Mauritania, has made a movie that is worthy of comparisons on several levels to Terrence Malick's wheat-field tragedy "Days of Heaven." Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: A film that deliberately expresses its outrage with religious oppression, offering moments of humour and, at times, startling beauty. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A masterful and heartbreaking account of religion trumping humanity. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Sissako, with a few blunt-force exceptions, usually refrains from showing violence, preferring to juxtapose cruel acts with poetic images. Read more

Violet Lucca, Village Voice: Sissako's gorgeous fourth feature reflects upon the role religion currently plays in Africa, and the foundational clash of cultures that shaped the continent. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: For a film that makes you sick with dread, Timbuktu has a light, at times glancing touch. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: In providing audiences a chance to bear witness to unspeakable suffering as well as dazzling defiance and human dignity, Sissako has created a film that's a privilege to watch. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The film throbs with humanity, and abounds in extraordinary images ... Read more