Timbuktu
Cohen Media Group | Release Date: January 28, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJan 9, 2016
Visually dazzling and morally devastating. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsMar 19, 2015
The movie Timbuktu is as fresh as today’s headlines, but it’s paced and photographed like a timeless slice of life. It’s an exquisite, wise and even funny film, easily the best of the year. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniFeb 20, 2015
A transcendent political poem as intellectually rigorous as it is beautiful. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyFeb 12, 2015
Sissako’s point, while never heavy-handed, is hard to miss: Traditional Muslims are among the world’s biggest victims of Islamic militarism. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 12, 2015
In providing audiences a chance to bear witness to unspeakable suffering as well as dazzling defiance and human dignity, Sissako has created a film that’s a privilege to watch. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsGraham FullerJan 30, 2015
The movie's Islamists aren't true believers but a bunch of thugs. A madwoman who dismisses them with a blunt word has much greater moral authority. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirJan 29, 2015
An extraordinary accomplishment, a heartbreaking, visually spectacular and largely accessible work from a cinematic master who is more than ready for international attention. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 29, 2015
If Timbuktu — a nominee for this year’s foreign-film Oscar — were politically astute and nothing more, it would still serve a valuable purpose. But the film throbs with humanity, and abounds in extraordinary images. Read full review
100
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeJan 28, 2015
Each scene is breathtaking, such as a long shot of a river at a key moment, and an unforgettable soccer game played with no ball. Timbuktu deserves every accolade it gets. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyJan 28, 2015
A thoroughly remarkable and disquieting film from Mali’s Abderrahamane Sissako, Timbuktu is also a work of almost breathtaking visual beauty, but it manages to ravish the heart while dazzling the eye simultaneously, neither at the expense of the other. It’s a work of art that seems realized in an entirely organic way. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJan 27, 2015
Timbuktu is an act of resistance and revenge because it asserts the power of secularism not as an ideology but rather as a stubborn fact of life. Read full review
100
Village VoiceViolet LuccaJan 27, 2015
The film is consistently visually stunning in a way that's ever more rare, and Sissako's bravura moment of filmmaking is embedded in a scene on a river that seals the Tuareg patriarch's fate. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineChris CabinOct 1, 2014
The film's criticism isn't primarily rooted in satire, but rather in fury and condemnation for those who seek to be gods while shamefully feigning to follow and praise one god. Read full review
100
VarietyJay WeissbergMay 25, 2014
In the hands of a master, indignation and tragedy can be rendered with clarity yet subtlety, setting hysteria aside for deeper, more richly shaded tones. Abderrahmane Sissako is just such a master. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianMarc MohanFeb 20, 2015
Sissako, whose previous film, 2006's "Bamako," also tackled political issues with aplomb and complexity, doesn't need to craft an overwrought denunciation of ignorant fanaticism. The humanism with which he approaches both the perpetrators and the victims of the violence inherent in this petty, small-minded tyranny makes the strongest argument possible against the Boko Harams of the world. Read full review
91
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 6, 2015
Sissako, a Muslim, frames his story as a cry against religious intolerance. One of the characters, speaking of jihadism, says, “Where is piety? Where is God in all this?” It is the central question of this movie – and of much more now than this movie. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyJan 29, 2015
The screenplay — by the French Mauritania director and Malian co-writer Kessen Tall, in her feature debut — is a mesmerizing blend of the horrific and the humorous as it boils ideology down to the personal level. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJan 29, 2015
If Timbuktu has a “takeaway,” it’s a deeply humanist one and so, in this context, political: that there’s no such thing as a monolithic Muslim culture; that the threat is nowhere near as great to Westerners as to the people of Mali, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc.; that ideology is deaf and blind and anti-life; and that cinema (and all art) can blow it to what I’d once have called Timbuktu. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMar 4, 2015
The film is a magnificent document of secular humanism. Read full review
88
Boston GlobePeter KeoughFeb 19, 2015
The Mauritanian-born Abderrahmane Sissako, one of the great filmmakers of sub-Saharan Africa, does not need to resort to propaganda in Timbuktu to denounce fanaticism. He has poetry. With subtlety, irony, and even humor, he gradually prepares the viewer for the horror to come. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyJan 28, 2015
In essence, Timbuktu is about how farce turns into terror. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 25, 2014
For all its value in bearing witness to the kind of atrocious acts that get but little attention on the world stage, this is not mere testimony, this is cleverly crafted and remarkably affecting storytelling. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid ParkinsonMay 26, 2015
Exceptional, human filmmaking. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonKeith UhlichJan 28, 2015
Sissako’s methods are confrontational, yet never to the point that you feel you’re watching sacrificial lambs instead of people caught in a horrible situation. In this terrible context, madness and death are blessings. It’s living that’s the curse. Read full review
80
The DissolveScott TobiasJan 27, 2015
Timbuktu’s delicate tone is totally unexpected and specific to Sissako, who keeps finding notes of vulnerability. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 25, 2014
This is in no way the remorselessly grim film its subject matter might lead you to expect – it’s full of life, irony, poetry and bitter unfairness. It demands respect, but it also earns it. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 25, 2014
Sissako's film is at turns funny, poetic and deeply moving. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 25, 2014
Abderrahmane Sissako's passionate and visually beautiful film Timbuktu is a cry from the heart. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungMay 25, 2014
The film’s methods are boldly unorthodox and its constantly alternating moods and shifts in tone from drama to humor, joy to tragedy can be disconcerting. It’s not a film for all audiences, but despite its eccentricities it is always watchable, thanks to strongly drawn characters and the soul-stirring poetry of its imagery. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 15, 2015
When it’s over, there’s nothing more to take from the film than the uneasy feeling that what we’ve seen is either intolerant and biased, or a warning. It’s not Islamophobic to fear the spread of this primitive oppression, be it in Syria or Nigeria. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJan 26, 2015
Timbuktu is hard to grasp, as befits the sand-blown setting and the mythical status of the name. The more you try to define the movie, the faster it sifts away. Read full review
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