HEREMAKONO

EN ATTENDENT LE BONHEUR

Abderrahmane Sissako
France, Mauritania 2002 | 90 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU

The sev­en­teen year old Abdal­lah leaves his home­town, Bamako in Mali, and visits his mother in Nouad­hi­bou in Mau­ri­tius, while he is wait­ing to move on to Europe.The small, sleepy fish­ing vil­lage on an island off the Atlantic coast, has become the meet­ing place for many refugees who all hope that this place will become the start of a new future. In this place of exile and uncer­tain hopes, Addal­lah attempts to under­stand the people who sur­round him, despite the fact that he does not speak their lan­guage. There is Nana, a young woman who tries to seduce him; Makan, who, like him, dreams of Europe; Maata, the fish­er­man who became an elec­tri­cian; and Khatra, his appren­tice, who attempts to teach Abdal­lah the local lan­guage so that he can break through the silence that he has been con­demned to. All of these char­ac­ters come togeth­er, move apart, and in their pass­ing pro­vide a wist­ful look into the for­tunes that lie just beyond the horizon. 

In this film, Abder­rah­mane Sis­sako takes on a topic which is close to his heart: the exile and the soft poetry of elapsed time.The scenes from every day life come togeth­er in the film to create a bril­liant por­trait of a soci­ety that longs to be…elsewhere.