Mali Blues (2016)

Directed by

Lutz Gregor

Genre

documentary film

Country

Mali, Germany

Runtime

1h 30m

Rating

5.0 of 10 from 4 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Four Malian musicians keep performing in Bamako after Islamist groups banned music in northern Mali in 2012. The film follows them as they make art under threat.

hopefuldefiantslow-pacedjoyfulculturalresilientmusicalunfolding

What happens

Mali Blues is a 2016 documentary film directed by German filmmaker Lutz Gregor. The film documents the lives of four musicians in Mali's capital city, Bamako, following a music ban with the takeover of northern Mali by Islamist groups between 2012 and 2013. The film had its premiere at the 2016 Visions du Réel, the international documentary film festival in Switzerland. Malian musicians Fatoumata Diawara, Ahmed Ag Kaedy, Bassekou Kouyate, and Master Soumy feature. The film had its premiere at the Visions du Reel in 2016, presented in the Bambara, Arabic, and French languages, with subtitles in English and French. American film critic Frank Scheck, in The Hollywood Reporter, wrote that although Mali Blues was repetitive and sluggish in its pacing at times, it was nevertheless a "gorgeous paean to the liberating effects of music and the joy it can bring even to people faced with violent repression in the name of religion." Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan found the most "compelling" scene to be the one in which Diawara returns to her childhood home, where she performs a song and speaks out against female genital mutilation. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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