Nuevos Tiempos
2010 · 18m
Directed by Jorge Dorado
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Two young Senegalese men, Kine and Ibrahima, recount how they try to improve their lives in a place where dreaming big is hard and the resources to do so are scarce.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a straight documentary about aspiration in Senegal—exactly the kind of earnest, well-meaning project that makes festivals feel good about themselves without breaking a sweat; I'd rather watch someone fail spectacularly at something weird than watch this competent grief.
Dorado works in a lineage of intimate portraiture and observational clarity, and the restraint here—letting long takes breathe, refusing the easy emotional manipulation—marks a filmmaker thinking carefully about form and patience in the coming-of-age tradition.
The entire film hangs on the decision to let Kine and Ibrahima speak for themselves in voiceover while the camera holds on faces and empty streets—that choice transforms what could've been a typical development-documentary into something achingly specific, where silence becomes the third character.