March 20, 2015

Award-winning director of Timbuktu coming to Princeton April 8Film Screening and Q&A with filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako

Oscar-nominated film about jihadists arriving in northern Mali in 2012, shattering the peaceful lives of the local inhabitants, is part of the John Sacret-Young ’69 Lecture Series

Photo caption: A still from Timbuktu, the award-winning film by Abderrahmane Sissako who will visit Princeton to screen and discuss his filmPhoto credit: Courtesy of Abderrahmane Sissako

What: Timbuktu: Screening of the award-winning film about jihadists arriving in northern Mali in 2012, shattering the peaceful lives of the local inhabitants, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakerWho: Director and filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, presented by Lewis Center for the Arts, Council on the Humanities, Committee for Film Studies, Princeton Garden TheatreWhen: Wednesday, April 8, 2015, 7:00 pmWhere: Princeton Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau St, Princeton, NJ 08452Free and open to the public

(Princeton, NJ) The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, in partnership with

Princeton’s Council on the Humanities, the Committee for Film Studies, and Princeton Garden

Theater, present an evening of film and conversation with award-winning director Abderrahmane

Sissako, part of the John Sacret-Young ’69 Lecture Series. The evening will include a screening

of the award-winning feature film, Timbuktu, about jihadists arriving in northern Mali in 2012,

shattering the peaceful lives of the local inhabitants, followed by a Q&A with the director and a

reception. Timbuktu was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section

at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, garnered a 2015 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign

Language Film, and swept the Cesar Awards in February, winning seven of the eight categories

in which it was nominated, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. 

The event will take place on Wednesday, April 8, at 7:00 pm at the Princeton Garden Theatre,

160 Nassau Street.

Abderrahmane Sissako was born in Kiffa, Mauritania, in 1961 and raised in Mali, his father’s

homeland. When he returned to Mauritania in 1980, the emotional and financial difficulties of

adjustment led him to turn to literature and film. A study grant allowed him to attend the Institute

of the University of Moscow. Le Jeu (1989), first presented as a graduation assignment, won the

prize for best short film at the Giornate del Cinema Africano of Perugia in 1991. In 1993,

October was shown at Locarno and won prizes the world over. His film Waiting for Happiness

was screened at Cannes 2002 and was winner of the FIPRESCI award for best film in the Un

certain regard section. It was also shown at the New York Film Festival in 2002 and won the

Grand Prize at FESPACO in 2003. The overtly political Bamako (2006) represents a move away

from autobiography, but the explicit subject of Bamako had been the implicit themes of his other

films: the legacy of colonialism and the lopsided relationship between the first and third worlds.

Sissako is, along with Ousmane Sembène, Souleymane Cissé, Idrissa Ouedraogo and Djibril

Diop Mambety, one of the few filmmakers from sub-Saharan Africa to reach a measure of

international influence.

John Sacret-Young, for whom the lecture series is named, is a 1969 graduate of Princeton and

an author, producer, director, and screenwriter. Young has been nominated for seven Emmy

Awards and seven Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards, winning two WGA Awards. He is

perhaps best known for co-creating, along with William F. Broyles Jr., China Beach, the

critically acclaimed ABC-TV drama series about medics and nurses during the Vietnam War, and

for his work on the television drama The West Wing. Young has also received a Golden Globe

and a Peabody Award, and his original mini-series about the Gulf War, Thanks of a Grateful

Nation, was honored with his fifth Humanitas Prize nomination.

This event is presented with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and

Institut Français.

To learn more about this event and the more than 100 events presented each year by the Lewis

Center for the Arts, visit: arts.princeton.edu.

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