Baamum Nafi
Mamadou Dia, Senegal, 2019o
Two brothers fight over their children’s wedding. Tierno’s role as a father and his responsibility as a spiritual leader are at odds.
The film would be a significant achievement if it did nothing but provide a grippingly detailed picture of the rise of extremism against the backdrop of daily life in a tiny town in northern Senegal. But with his first feature, Dia succeeds not only in capturing this local situation, but in creating a tragedy of universal dimension in which brothers are pitted against brothers and children must suffer for the errors of their fathers.
Nicholas Elliott