Cinema
Life on Earth
La Vie sur terre
Abderrahmane Sissako · 1998
Synopsis
On the eve of the year 2000, Dramane, a filmmaker living in France, writes to his father that he is coming to see him in Sokolo, a village in Mali, wanting to film its life. Once there, he changes his clothes and rides around the village by bicycle, repeatedly crossing paths with Nana, a young woman passing through. At the post office, the only telephone in the place, the inhabitants try to reach their relatives, in Paris or in neighbouring towns, without always succeeding. The village radio reads pages by Aimé Césaire, while RFI announces the change of millennium.
Context
The film belongs to the series “2000 vu par…”, launched by Haut et Court and La Sept Arte, which asked filmmakers from ten countries to imagine the passage into the new millennium. Planned at first as a fiction, it was shot without a screenplay, with a small crew and in little time; the actress who plays Nana rode into a shot by chance on a bicycle, and the author's father plays himself. Shown at the Directors' Fortnight, at Cannes, in May 1998, broadcast by Arte on 4 December, it was released in cinemas on 9 June 1999. It received the grand prize of the Fribourg festival and a special jury prize at the Carthage Film Days.
Who it is for
A one-hour film, in French and Bambara; it is watched as a series of moments from the life of a village.
Prizes and reception
Its American distributor, California Newsreel, regards it as the most inventive and most admired film of the series.
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