Screened as part of NZIFF 2017

Wùlu 2016

Directed by Daouda Coulibaly

The rise and rise of a young drug trafficker takes on a new level of jeopardy when civil war convulses Mali in this muscular gangster thriller with a sharp political edge.

France / Mali / Senegal In Bambara and French with English subtitles
95 minutes CinemaScope / DCP

Director/Screenplay

Producers

Eric Névé
,
Oumar Sy

Photography

Pierre Milon

Editor

Julien Leloup

Production designer

Papa Mahamoudou Kouyaté

Costume designer

Mariam Coulibaly

Music

Eric Neveux

With

Ibrahim Koma (Ladji)
,
Inna Modja (Aminata)
,
Ismaël N’Diaye (Zol)
,
Jean-Marie Traoré (Houphouet)
,
Habib Dembélé (Issiaka)
,
Mariame N’Diaye (Assitan)
,
Quim Gutiérrez (the Colombian)
,
Olivier Rabourdin (Jean-François)

Festivals

Toronto
,
London 2016; New Directors/New Films 2017

“Malian director Daouda Coulibaly’s auspicious debut is a pulse-pounding political thriller about a low-level transit worker turned drug trafficker, whose rapid ascent in Bamako’s criminal underworld entangles him with the military, the government, and eventually al-Qaeda… Suspenseful and impeccably paced, Coulibaly’s first feature marks him as a director to watch, a filmmaker equally skilled at crafting thrilling set pieces and at shining a critical light on systems of power.” — Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival

Scarface is the genre gift that keeps on giving, even when set in Mali. Yet one of the strengths of Wùlu is that its writer-director, Daouda Coulibaly, in a tense, tight feature debut, has made a familiar story singularly his own. And while much remains the same – the crime, the punishment and the intimations of incest – here, acts of individual wrongdoing tend to pale next to the wrongs of postcolonialism and organized terror. That deepens the tragedy of Ladji (an excellent Ibrahim Koma), who, even as he advances through the underworld, remains as much a victim as a victimizer.” — Manohla Dargis, NY Times