Sacred Places

Burkina Faso’s capital city, Ouagadougou, is the location of the “official” showcase of African film, the FESPACO Film Festival. But here Jean-Marie Téno spotlights the far livelier heart of African cinema: the run-down “cine clubs” where a bootleg DVD, an old TV, and a few benches keep film alive not with money or polish, but through sheer love. Effortlessly switching among three men’s stories, Téno turns this tale of (a) cinema into a treatise on the arts in Africa—and the world—today, addressing how the moving image, music, and writing can affect society, and how they can flourish in even the bleakest settings.