Yam Daabo / Kummatty (Criterion) 05/26 Blu-ray (Rental)

Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has maintained a fierce commitment to preserving and presenting masterpieces from around the globe, with a growing roster of more than sixty restorations of works by essential filmmakers. This collector’s set gathers four groundbreaking and innovative films, ranging from the epic to the intimate, from Algeria (Chronicle of the Years of Fire), Burkina Faso (Yam daabo), India (Kummatty), and Kazakhstan (The Fall of Otrar). Each title is a significant contribution to the art form and a window onto a cinematic tradition that international audiences previously had limited opportunities to experience. THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 4K digital restorations of all four films, overseen by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna (and with Film Heritage Foundation on Kummatty), with uncompressed monaural soundtracks New introductions to the films by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese New interviews featuring film scholar and producer Ahmed Bedjaoui (on Chronicle of the Years of Fire); film and African-studies scholar Aboubakar Sanogo (on Yam daabo); and photographer Ramu Aravindan, director G. Aravindan’s son, and film editor and festival programmer Bina Paul (on Kummatty) The Making of “The Fall of Otrar,” a new program featuring interviews with director Ardak Amirkulov, actor Tungyshbai Dzhamankulov, production designer Umirzak Shmanov, and film journalist Gulnara Abikeyeva Updated English subtitle translations PLUS: Essays by critics and scholars Joseph Fahim, Chrystel Oloukoï, Ratik Asokan, and Kent Jones CHRONICLE OF THE YEARS OF FIRE Burning with passion, poetry, and a nation’s fervent spirit of resistance, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s stirring revolutionary epic vividly dramatizes the pivotal decades leading up to Algeria’s War of Independence through the harrowing saga of Ahmed (Yorgo Voyagis), a proud farmer seeking a dignified life, whose experience of brutal oppression and systemic injustice leads him, like so many others, to take a stand against the seemingly indomitable might of French colonialism. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, this awe-inspiring landmark of Arab cinema is an at once personal and expansive vision of a country awakening from despair to build an unbreakable movement of liberation YAM DAABO A family’s quest for self-determination mirrors a nation’s struggle in the sensitively observed feature debut by titan of Burkinabe cinema Idrissa Ouédraogo, who cast an ennobling gaze on ordinary Africans navigating the upheavals of the postcolonial era. Made amid revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara’s push to create a self-reliant Burkina Faso, Yam daabo follows an impoverished family as they leave behind a life in the city reliant on Western aid to start anew in the more verdant countryside, quietly capturing the rhythms of everyday life as well as its devastating tragedies and intimate joys. Featuring music by the legendary Francis Bebey, Yam daabo imbues an elemental human story with profound political weight. KUMMATTY Beautifully photographed amid the lush pastoral landscapes of southern India’s Kerala region, this enchanting child’s-eye fable conjures a folkloric world in which the magical exists side by side with the everyday. When Kummatty, a kind of shamanic bogeyman, arrives in a small village, he captivates the children with his music and colorful masks—until he casts a spell that has unexpected consequences for one boy. Bursting with exuberant songs and children’s chants, this fantasy from G. Aravindan, a pioneer of India’s art-house “parallel cinema” movement, is a treasure of imagination and entrancing visual lyricism. THE FALL OF OTRAR Kazakh New Wave iconoclast Ardak Amirkulov’s hypnotic thirteenth-century epic is a feverish vision of one of history’s most decisive battles—Genghis Khan’s siege of the now-lost city of Otrar—engraved in images of stunning, hallucinatory power. When his warnings about an imminent invasion are taken for insolence, a former Mongol scout (Dokhdurbek Kydyraliyev) must escape imprisonment to stop an escalating diplomatic crisis and avert a clash of civilizations. With a panoramic scope that encompasses intimate palace intrigue and the merciless sweep of battlefield carnage, The Fall of Otrar is a monumental imagining of seismic historical upheaval—and a terrifying, electrifying feast for the senses.