This visually ravishing historical allegory contrasts Africa's tremendous wealth and potential with its present poverty and plunder. Guimba tells a timeless tale of a tyrant's over-reaching and inevitable downfall, reminiscent of Shakespeare. Guimba, a powerful warrior and sorcerer, has seized power in the once prosperous town of Sitikali (present day Djenne) by killing his six predecessors, his wife, and his daughter. For the masked ruler, the key to power is spectacle-rituals, displays of obeisance, magic, arbitrary demonstrations of his power. Sissoko's film argues that the facade of tyranny can be shattered by everyday people seeing through its pretensions, "speaking truth to power." Sissoko is not so much saying that the emperor has no clothes as that behind the fine clothes there is no emperor.