About the film
Yeelen (Bambara for "brightness"/"light") is a 1987 Malian film written, directed and produced by Souleymane Cissé. It is filmed in the Bambara and Fula languages, and is based on a legend told by the Bambara people. Though the era is undefined, it is presumably set in the 13th century in the Mali Empire and is a heroic quest narrative featuring magic and precognition. Cissé has stated in an interview for Cahiers du Cinéma that it was "in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films” and that he “wanted to make a response to an external perception, a perception by white technicians and academics, an alien perception." It stars Issiaka Kane as Nianankoro, a young African man who possesses magical powers. Niamanto Sanogo plays Nianankoro's father, who is tracking his son through the Bambara, Fulani and Dogon lands of West Africa using a magical wooden post to guide him.
Where it streams
- Netflix check your country
How to watch it together from different places
Each of you opens Yeelen on your own account. Herae keeps the two players in sync, so a pause or a skip happens for both of you, and puts a video call in the corner of the film so you can see each other react.
How watching together long-distance works
Title details from Wikidata (CC0). Description from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Artwork from TMDB and Wikimedia Commons. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.