Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty • 1973 • Senegal
Starring Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a fractured portrait of the disenchantment of postindependence Senegal in the early 1970s. In this picaresque fantasy-drama, the disaffected young lovers Anta and Mory, fed up with Dakar, long to escape to the glamour and comforts they imagine France has to offer, but their plan is confounded by obstacles both practical and mystical. Alternately manic and meditative, TOUKI BOUKI has an avant-garde sensibility characterized by vivid imagery, bleak humor, unconventional editing, and jagged soundscapes, and it demonstrates Mambéty’s commitment to telling African stories in new ways.
Up Next in 30 Years of The Film Foundation
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Trances
Directed by Ahmed El Maânouni • 1981 • Morocco
The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating musical documentary. Storytellers through song, with connections to political theater, the band became an international sensation (Western music critics have ofte...
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The Color of Pomegranates
Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1969 • Soviet Union
A breathtaking fusion of poetry, ethnography, and cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s masterwork overflows with unforgettable images and sounds. In a series of tableaux that blend the tactile with the abstract, THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES revives the splen...
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Memories of Underdevelopment
Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea • 1968 • Cuba
Starring Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Omar ValdésThis film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is the most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Serg...
