Wùlu

Wúlu follows a sympathetic young man who makes bad decisions for all the right reasons, and as a result has to deal with corrupt state officials, cold-blooded gangsters and Al-Qaeda. Twenty-year old Ladji from Mali has worked as a bus driver for five years in order to raise money for helping his sister out of the prostitution business. When he misses his chance to be promoted, in favour of his boss nephew, he contacts the drug dealer Driss, who owes Ladji a favour.

Driss introduces him to his boss, and this becomes the start of Ladji's new career as a smuggler - a position where Ladji can use his smartness and ambition to created a name for himself. However, he returns one day from Senegal with a shipment of cocaine, only to find his boss brutally murdered and replaced by a new man. From this point onward, Ladju finds himself in a downward spiral of violence and money, and before long he realises that his own actions have grave consequences for other people.

This dark, West-African thriller is set in the period leading up to the civil war in Mali in 2012, and gives insight into the brutality and corruption of a war-ridden society. The story takes us through some intense highs and lows, and with its strong characters and dramatic story, it has been compared to Brian De Palma's gangster tragedy Scarface. Kasper Bræin Selvig

Daouda Coulibaly (b. 1977) is a French-Malian filmmaker born in Marseilles. He has previously worked as an editor for television, and directed his first short film in 2009. Coulibaly has been part of a support scheme for African film initiated by the production company Focus Features, which has resulted in his first feature film Wúlu. The Islamist-ed attacks on Bamako, mali, forced Coulibaly to shoot the film mainly in neighbouring Senegal.