AVClub: A stirring yet overstuffed documentary on musicians in exile, They Will Have To Kill Us First opens with a rundown of what happened in northern Mali in 2012—and refreshingly, it’s delivered in the form of a propulsive rap. That year, the National Movement For The Liberation Of Azawad (MNLA), a group fighting for the cause of the Tuareg ethnic minority, joined forces with jihadis to further its separatist ends; together, they repelled government forces—and took advantage of a destabilizing coup d’état—to declare independence in the Saharan north of that West African nation. Infighting between the MNLA and the Islamic extremists followed, ultimately allowing the latter to impose sharia law over a large swath of land encompassing the cities of Gao and Timbuktu. There, among a raft of other prohibitions, a ban on music took effect. A woman might well get 40 lashes just for singing, as does a character in last year’s Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Sissako’s superb drama about life under this very same fundamentalist rule.
