Mr. Sissako is both an indispensable political filmmaker and one of the great poets of contemporary cinema. His portrait of life under jihadi rule in northern Mali is brutal and shocking, but also gentle, generous and surprisingly funny. Mr. Sissako does not humanize violent extremists so much as demonstrate that they already belong to the species and reflect part of our common, tragic nature. But his movie also insists that the only effective and ethically serious way to oppose fanaticism is with humanism. Which is to say with irony, with decency and, perhaps above all, with art. (Read the review.)