Mati Diop, niece of filmmaker Djibil Diop Mambéty, mixes facts with fantasy, as in the latter’s best-known film, Touki Bouki. A Thousand Suns thus becomes an homage to this classic film but, above all, a sensitive portrait of a man who, in his own words, “lost himself”.

In 1973, Touki Bouki told the story of a couple eager to emigrate from Senegal to France. Diop follows protagonist Magaye Niang, who nowadays attends a special screening of that film. Like his character at the time, Niang stayed behind in his homeland. Forty years later, he is still cowering.

Diop’s film elicits reflections on the passage of time and the melancholy reckoning with failed promises and disappointed hopes. Niang’s stagnation resonates with the younger generation’s scathing criticism of their parents’ failure to achieve a political revolution in the fervor of ‘68. A Thousand Suns shows us glimpses of the life that could have been—an extraordinary dream of a film.