Life on Earth

Just before the twenty first century begins, Drahmane returns to Sokolo, his father’s village in Mali. Riding around the town on a bicycle, he thinks about the passing of time and about what a new millennium means. Everybody carries on with their daily work, and Sokolo may as well be the centre of the world. The film turns the idea of development and of a centre around; the question is not where the event is but who is doing the looking. The account moves at a slow, quiet, poetic pace. The director appears in the film himself, so the return he is describing is built through his own person. Short as it is, the film never hurries. Abderrahmane Sissako’s sixty one minute film was completed in 1998.