Missi, malo ani djegue

Bouba Dicko left his village Tébu in Mali during the great droughts. He has lived in Mopti since then, for several years now. In order to maintain contact with the river Niger, he took up the profession of a boatman. He sails across people on a small boat from Mopti to other villages in the delta.

Since a while, the water level has increased in the river and living conditions have improved. He has therefore decided to return to his native village. His return will be a moment of joy, when we can meet his "peuls" friends and his "bozo" family, who will all talk to us, show us the realities of the river and situations and problems they face everyday. A quest for identity, an inquiry on the condition of the Niger.

The idea for this film was born from a meeting: an encounter with the country, with the river, with the people...This film will be an enquiry: the river, personification of Malian realities, manifests quite a few issues in development. How to the people of the river perceive it, an element that they require in order to sustain a lievlihood? How does one show the reality of their lives? How does one imagine the river in terms of sustainable development...What kind of river can we leave to the future generations given the current situation?

Quest, inquest, this is precisely the film’s objective, in order to understand the river with the help of one of it’s mediators: Bouba. From these moments of encounters, of connivance, of discussion, Jose Ainouz, the director of the film will paint a sensitive portait of the river Niger and facilitate a better understanding of the problems surrounding it.