The Malian film Le Rêve de Dieu—by Fousseyni Maïga and Mariam Kamissoko—is one of those pictures followers of African cinema would hardly want to be seen outside of the immediate locale that forms its setting. How so? Well, while there is possibly a national audience for the story it tells, it is hard to see how any other audience can take it seriously in 2025.
Which, of course, makes its appearance as part of the Open Doors screenings at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival rather puzzling. Is this really what should represent the country of the late, great Souleymane Cisse in such an international setting as the famed European festival?
In any case, the film properly opens with a man reacting to the death of an Imam in a rather petulant manner—he throws a tantrum in a lake, the melodramatic move coming off as amusing rather than sad, a sign of the coming clumsiness. That death is the film’s focus, as a bunch of men fix to take his place.
Le Rêve de Dieu is hampered by clumsiness across acting, dialogue, and plotting.
Efiko Score: 3/10
One of them is Naite, the late imam’s deputy, a brash figure who seems to have had a difficult relationship with his superior. Another is Issa Nono, a man who is said to not belong because he comes from a line of fetishist. The last man in contention appears to be the late man’s son, Idy. He supplies Le Rêve de Dieu an amusing woman trouble subplot.
The film’s men—and their women—are all vaguely interesting characters, but their one-dimensionality seems more suited for a children’s storybook intended to teach straightforward lessons than for adult cinema. Ntjo is saintly from the start, the rest of the men are heavily flawed. The balance is way off and when somewhere near the ending, the battle for the imam’s seat is expanded somewhat, there is little doubt as to who would get the chance to lead.
Maiga, who’s responsible for the screenplay, and Kamissoko have made a film that makes the admirable attempt at exploring the politics of religion in a small West African village. But the results is a story that wants to cram in things—a bad husband bit, a scorned woman bit, and a land grabbing bit—that its approach to filmmaking fails to justify.
At the end of the screening in Locarno, one African audience member described the experience as traumatising. She might have been half-joking. Then, again, with the wooden acting and less than memorable dialogue on display, maybe she wasn’t.
