Description:

Waiting for Happiness
(Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002, Mauritania/France, 35mm, 96 min.)

Set in a Mauritanian coastal town at the edge of the Sahara Desert, Waiting for Happiness elliptically explores the gateways between Africa and Europe, tradition and modernity, childhood and adulthood. The cast of characters radiates around Abdallah, a 17-year-old intellectual distanced from the language and culture of his hometown; while he waits to emigrate to France, he struggles to communicate with the inhabitants and migrants around him. Abderrahmane Sissako weaves together disparate, yet invariably intoxicating sights and sounds, teasing out the systems of exchange and translation that exist even when life seems at a standstill.

Saharan Exchanges
One of the most distinctive and extreme environments in the world, the Sahara Desert has a fascinating cinematic history. While Western filmmakers have sought sublime spectacle among the dunes since the silent era, North African and sub-Saharan filmmakers have also used the desert as a backdrop for bold experiments in style and narrative. Programmed to complement the Block’s exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, the diverse films in Saharan Exchanges prove that the vast expanses of the region cannot be exhausted by any single genre or perspective.