A new film, Timbuktu, by Mauritanian/French director Abderrahmane Sissako explores the impact of invading jihadis on the daily lives of locals living in the Malian city of Timbuktu. It premiered at Cannes Film Festival this year, and in the US at this year's New York Film Festival.

It's a fiction film but based on Mali's recent reality. At the New York screening the director said he was moved to make the film when he heard about a Malian couple who were stoned to death by the jihadis. On the same day the world’s was transfixed by the release of a new iphone. Taking a swipe at the priorities of Western media, he says a Frenchman or American gets beaded and all the world learns about it. But this, he says, is happening to innocents in Mali all the time.

The locals in the film are mostly Muslim. Most women dress colorfully and practically. Music is an integral part northern Mali culture. Indeed Malian music is world famous. Sport - in particular football - is a regular past time. But when the locals go about their daily business getting water at a well or selling fish in the local market, the occupying jihadis harass the men about the length of their trousers and women about covering up their arms and hands. Music is banned and the jihadis roam the streets at night, breaking into the homes of people who play it anyway. Footballs are confiscated so the locals play with a hypothetical ball in defiance. The pent up frustration in the community drives an unfolding tragedy in the film. A sensitive, dignified, and sad film, well worth seeing. Trailer below - with French sub titles.