Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako is an African film of the sort grown common in recent years: financed jointly with European and American backing, the film is an earnest polemic on the savage blows the international community has felled upon the continent. The World Bank, the IMF, G8 and even Paul Wolfowitz all take their lashes in the form of testimony given in the film’s main through line, a show trial in which the plaintiff, “African society,” argues against exploitation by the aforementioned defendants. Rather than rely solely on the histrionics of trial procedural monologues, Mr. Sissako pairs his interview-style court scenes – shot plainly in an open-air courtyard, the plaintiffs speaking at length in fixed frame, un-broken takes – with a mystical blend of the mundane and the absurd. As the trial takes its course, the stories of a dissolving marriage, a bedridden invalid and the listless lives of the Malian plaintiffs fill the periphery in a blend of metaphors at once plain and profound. Even the intrusion of a slapstick western shootout can’t derail the mission of Bamako. From first frame to last, Mr. Sissako dispenses his infallible case for his home continent in seasoned fashion. A rejoinder on the mention of Mr. Sissako’s exclusion of trial procedural histrionics; the film does conclude with closing arguments. Speaking passionately on behalf of the Malians, a French prosecutor mentions the futility of tossing Paul Wolfowitz into the Niger, quipping in deadpan, “The caimans wouldn't want him.” In this screening, an uproarious mixture of laughter and applause rose from the crowd. Hopefully somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa Abderrahmane Sissako was smiling.