Brightness

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, BRIGHTNESS is being hailed as one of the finest films ever made in Black Africa. Stunningly photographed on the vast desert plains of Mali, the film is rooted in the tumultous but triumphant initiation to adulthood of a young man from the Bambaras tribe. The ritual involves receiving special knowledge for mastering life's forces — a knowledge that has been the privilege of his tribe for generations. An unceasing flow of arresting images accompanies the boy on his journey from childhood to manhood.