Abderrahmane Sissako was responsible for the African contribution to the film series 2000, Seen By…, television channel ARTE’s project celebrating the turn of the millennium. In the project, ten renowned directors were tasked with envisioning how the events of the millennium celebrations might play out. Sissako’s wonderfully warm and gentle visual poem about the unhurried comings and goings of a village in Mali is the true gem of ARTE’s project – which is no small praise, considering that some of the other directors involved included the likes of Walter Salles, Ildikó Enyedi, Tsai Ming-liang, Laurent Cantet, and Hal Hartley.
In the lead role, Sissako himself plays a man living in Europe who writes a letter home to his father before making the journey back to visit him in his destitute home village in Mali. As the turn of the millennium approaches, the village’s only phone acts as a connection to a grandstanding and materialistic Europe. Meanwhile, bathed in beautiful light, the village continues its arrestingly quiet day-to-day existence. The significance of time and being present in the moment is brought to the forefront.
With delightful absurdity, a continuous stream of bikes, donkeys and other passers-by seems to constantly parade across the screen. Life on Earth is a film grand in its smallness – a film about a way of life, and the relativity of life’s essentials.
Timo Malmi