“It’s easy to recommend Abderrahmane Sissako’s exuberant BAMAKO, not least for its vibrant Malian settings and cast of villagers. More substantially, the movie takes on a key issue of our time—African debt and the crippling policies of the International Monetary Fund—and magically manages to be critical without feeling at all like a lecture. The issues are mostly explored in a dazzling fictional trial, one that’s interrupted by a bizarro, Leone-style Western starring Danny Glover. Rarely have politics and pleasure mixed this freely.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out NY

“With a light touch, a dry wit, and vast sympathy, (Sissako) sketches the local ways of birth, death, health, work, art, law, and love – and suggests their painfully frustrating dependence on bureaucratic levers pulled half a world away.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Provocative!” – New York Magazine

“A distinctive gem.” – Gene Seymour, Newsday

“Structurally sophisticated, densely textual, and politically complex. (The trial) plays out with charm.”
– Nathan Lee, Village Voice

“Judge Judy’s courtroom was never like this…Sissako entertainingly (blends) serious international issues with the daily comings and goings of village life.”
– V.A. Musetto, New York Post

“Captures how Africa is everyone’s businesss, whether or not Westerners or Africans want it that way.”
– Nicholas Rapold, The New York Sun

“A feat of intellectual and cinematic daring that will leave your brain buzzing.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

“A scorching polemic that accuses the West of looting Africa and calling it benevolence…
The strength and seriousness of the indictment that is BAMAKO makes it one of the most powerful political films of recent years.”
– Jay Carr, AM New York

“Full of grace notes, delicate observation, plangent pageantry.” – James Quandt, Artforum

“Entertains as it informs, and portrays the complex realities of contemporary Africa. Part of a pan-African cinematic tradition of telling the truth - a truth that in this case replicates the complaints African specialists have been making against the West for some time.”
– N. Frank Ukadike, Sight + Sound