Timbuktu (2014 film) The film was named the twelfth "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by The New York Times. The film looks at the brief occupation of Timbuktu, Mali by Ansar Dine. Parts of the film were influenced by a 2012 public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok. It was shot in Oualata, a town in south-east Mauritania. The film explores the denizens of the city of Timbuktu, Mali, in West Africa, who are living under strict Sharia law around the year 2012. The city is under the occupation of extremist Islamists bearing a jihadist black flag.
Timbuktu has been dubbed the 'Harmattan Haze'. Additionally, when the dust settles in the city, sand builds up and desertification looms. The wealth and very existence of Timbuktu depended on its position as the southern terminus of an important trans-Saharan trade route; nowadays, the only goods that are routinely transported across the desert are slabs of rock salt brought from the Taoudenni mining centre in the central Sahara north of Timbuktu. Until the second half of the 20th century most of the slabs were transported by large salt caravans or azalai, one leaving Timbuktu in early November and the other in