Waiting for Happiness

Join us at this special screening marking 20 years since the release of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness. This visually arresting film will be presented in 35mm.

The film sees melancholic young student Abdallah return to his picturesque seaside village in Mauritania. Feeling like an outsider and barely able to remember his own Hassaniya dialect, his mother’s efforts to help him adapt proved useless. Before departing for Europe, he gets a glimpse of the fascinating characters of the village and the timeless poetry of their lives…

Born in 1961 in Mauritania, Abderrahmane Sissako spent his childhood in Mali. He later spent six years in Moscow, where he studied at the VGIK film institute. In his shorts, documentaries and feature-length fiction films, Sissako has often explored the exile experience and the relationship between African and Western societies.

His film Waiting for Happiness premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival official selection under Un Certain Regard, winning a FIPRESCI Prize. His 2014 film Timbuktu was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.