(Black Tea by Abderrahmane Sissako © Olivier Marceny / Cinéfrance Studios / Archipel 35 / Dune Vision)   By M.R. D’Amico   Even before its world premiere at Berlinale 2024, Black Tea had generated strong interest among major international distributors, a promising start for the film’s journey into the global market. Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, after the amazing success of his first Oscar-nominated film Timbuktu in 2014, embarks here...

Siraj Syed covers CommunicAsia 2017: Post-event reportage, 02: GLOBAL Technologies selects Newtec to provide cellular backhaul for Mattel Newtec--a specialist in designing, developing and manufacturing equipment and technologies for satellite communications—has announced a CommunicAsia Singapore, May 2017, the successful commercial deployment of a Newtec Dialog, multi-service platform, to provide cellular backhaul for Mattel, Mauritania’s leading mobile operator. Working wi...

  Don't go see Timbuktu expecting revival of Kismet. Abderrahmane Sissako's latest film offers a somewhat more subdued portrait of Mali's spiritual and intellectual capital, one where music is banned. So are soccer, cigarettes, laughter and unveiled women, among other prohibitions being slapped on local citizens in 2012, as mujahideen spread their brand of Sharia to the West African nation's northern tier. We first meet these zealots barreling across the desert in a pick...

By Adrienne Papp Nine features will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 87th Academy Awards®.  Eighty-three films had originally been considered in the category. The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are: Argentina, “Wild Tales,” Damián Szifrón, director; Estonia, “Tangerines,” Zaza Urushadze, director; Georgia, “Corn Island,” G...