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The World Bank and the IMF are put on trial in Abderrahmane Sissako´s "Bamako" (2006). Bamako is the capital city of Mali, and inland country in Western Africa, and provides the setting for this trial in which African citizens and lawyers testify against the global institutions that have imposed severe economic restrictions on many African nations.
The official term is "structural adjustment," an official sounding policy which purportedly designed to force African debtor nations to adhere to sound fiscal policies which will enable them to better pay off their debts. The consequences, according to Sissako and most of the witnesses who speak in the film, have been devastating, preventing nations like Mali from spending on infrastructure. By most measures, the quality of life has decreased in countries "helped" by the World Bank and IMF, and even talk of so-called debt forgiveness doesn´t begin to address the situation.
The main action of Sissako´s film occurs in a courtyard where the trial takes place. One witness after another speaks out against global fiscal policy; it is a telling reminder of colonialism that the "official" language used in court is French. While there´s no doubt that "Bamako" is first and foremost a political film, Sissako is also interested in telling a story or, in this case, several stories.
The stories take place on the fringes of the trial, and we are only given brief glimpses of each thread. Melé (Aïssa Maïga) is a lounge singer who plans to leave her husband and return home to Senegal. A security guard has lost his gun, and interrogates some of the locals as he searches for it. A young man lies sick in bed. We don´t see the beginnings of any of these stories, and only the end of one, and ending which we cannot possibly anticipate. It´s a fascinating narrative strategy that requires the viewer to fill in details and to just plain guess at many points. It´s also a brilliant way of breaking up the dry rhetoric of the courtroom without ever letting the trial fade into the background.
The trial (like most trials, really) is a grand theater performance, an observation of ritual that is as important for its form as its content. Sissako breathes a naturalistic feel into the scenes by giving his actors ample room to think on their feet. Many of the trial participants are real lawyers or government officials and, in many cases, Sissako didn´t provide them with any lines, instead requiring them to prepare for the trial and to react to other testimony. In contrast with the indirect approach to the satellite subplots, Sissako´s uses the trial as a blunt weapon to lay bare his accusations against the IMF and the World Bank (and, by proxy, the Western nations that bleed Africa dry) and also, dare I say, to "raise issues" and "make people think." It may be a mock trial, but the charges are frighteningly real. "Bamako" is clearly designed as a grassroots educational tool as well as an entertaining film. If this means some viewers find the film a bit dry, that´s too bad.
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