Passionate, humanistic and enormously powerful, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards and screened in competition for the Palme d Or at Cannes Film Festival 2014. Based on the forceful takeover of Mail in 2012, Timbuktu is a searing and extraordinary fable about the dangers of religious extremism that positions Sissako at the forefront of African cinema.