Touki Bouki

Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty

1973 / 89min / DCP

By turns naturalistic and audaciously surreal, Mambéty’s postcolonialist picaresque follows a pair of young lovers—dandyish cowherd Mory and student Anta (Magaye and Mareme Niang) who dream of abandoning their lives in Dakar for the promise of Paris. Moving freely between pastoral idyll and jagged, dissonant modernism, Touki Bouki is a film of contrast and collision, depicting a world in which poverty exists cheek-and-jowl with the conspicuous consumption of a new, cosmopolite postcolonial upper crust, while endemic corruption remains a constant between the old guard and the new. Having already made a splash at the Carthage Film Festival, winning the Silver Tanit for his 1970 Badou Boy, Mambéty was launched on the world stage with his debut feature, awarded by Cannes and the Moscow International Film Festival, though it would be 20 years until his next.

Distributor: Janus

Restored in 2008 by The World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with the family of Djibril Diop Mambéty. Restoration funding provided by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.