Amadou & Mariam

Malian musicians Amadou and Mariam are one of Africa’s most successful pop exports. The married couple, both of whom lost their sight as young children, have performed to audiences all over the globe, spreading their unique brand of infectious joy and attracting the attention of some of the pop world’s leading musicians. That same joy imbues this intimately made film, which chronicles the course of their career over the last five decades. Sadly, Amadou died in 2025 at the age of 70—as we learn in the first few minutes of the film—but the couple’s songs live on, a powerful testament to music’s transcendent, unifying power. The film also looks at Mali’s troubled political landscape, which has, in the past decade, been significantly fractured by the arrival of jihadists, whose first steps towards entrenching social control included banning music, a particularly radical proposition given its centrality to Malian life.