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.
History of Timbuktu tell complex located southeast of the Timbuktu near the Wadi el-Ahmar was excavated between 2008 and 2010 by archaeologists from Yale University and the Mission Culturelle de Tombouctou. The results suggest that the site was first occupied during the 5th century BC, thrived throughout the second half of the 1st millennium AD and eventually collapsed sometime during the late 10th or early 11th century AD. Unlike Gao, Timbuktu is not mentioned by the early Arab geographers such as al-Bakri and al-Idrisi. The first mention is by the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta who visited both Timbuktu and Kabara in 1353 when