Life on Earth
(La Vie sur terre)

On the eve of the year 2000, Paris-based filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako returns to visit his father in Sokolo, the small Malian town where he grew up. It may be the advent of a new millennium, but life in the town wends its course mostly unaffected. The daily rituals (bike rides, setting up the market stalls, endless discussions on the square) are captured in tiny poetic and burlesque touches, contrasting with the Western excitement reported on the radio. This debut feature of Abderrahmane Sissako is still an unclassifiable object that relies on both the filmed letter about the poem of the exiled (in the poetic spirit of Aimé Césaire) and a mischievous fable on the torments of communication. JL