“Timbuktu” at Sag Harbor Cinema

Timbuktu is a 2014 French-Mauritanian drama film directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

At Cannes, it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the François Chalais Prize. It has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.

The film looks at the brief occupation of Timbuktu, Mali by Ansar Dine. Parts of the film were influenced by a 2012 public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok. It was shot in Oualata, a town in south-east Mauritania.

“Aguelhok is neither Damascus nor Teheran,” filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako said in a pre-production statement over a year ago, adding that, “and in no way am I looking to over-emotionalize these events for the purposes of a moving film. What I do want to do is bear witness as a filmmaker. Because I will never be able to say I didn’t know. And because of what I know now, I must tell this story – in the hope that no child may ever have to learn this same lesson in the future. That their parents could die, simply because they love each other.”

Showing at 4 p.m. March 21 ONLY. The Sag Harbor Cinema is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the winter season.