The story recounts the misfortunes of Ladji (Ibrahim Koma), young, poor and ambitious, who can’t resist the siren-call of a lucrative life in organized crime in pre-2012 Mali.
TIFF’s take on Wùlu – “a pulse-pounding political thriller about a low-level transit worker turned drug trafficker, whose rapid ascent in Bamako’s criminal underworld entangles him with the military, the government and even rebels.”
Director Daouda Coulibaly filmed Wùlu in both Senegal and Mali itself, a landlocked former French colony in West Africa wherein half the population of 14 million live below the poverty line (defined as under 1.25 USD a day) – it is one of the poorest countries in the world.