Our screening on 9 March will be introduced by

filmmaker Bamba Diop and will be followed by a post-film discussion in the Garden Bar.

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 (Myriam Niang) and Mory (Magaye Niang), 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.

Touki Bouki was restored in 2008 by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the family of director Djibril Diop Mambéty. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways, and Qatar Museum Authority.

Content warning: Contains scenes of unsimulated animal slaughter.

Cast:
Magaye Niang, Myriam Niang