The Great Green Wall

In a world full of “disaster porn” and hectoring eco-documentaries that leave the viewer frozen with despair, The Great Green Wall stands out as filled with genuine hope and possibility. Taking the form of a 5,000-mile road trip across Africa from west to east through the Sahel - the farmlands on the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, imminently threatened with desertification - it is fronted by the highly engaging Malian singer Inna Modja, who leads us on a voyage of discovery, not only of the titular tree-planting project, “pharaonic” in scale, but of modern Africa’s popular music scene and simmering spirit of self-reliance. Capturing the colours and sounds of West Africa, and thus a feeling of being there, The Great Green Wall is deliciously Afrocentric and has a straightforward message: that the twin evils of Boko Haram terrorism and mass emigration have the same root cause, the southward advance of the Sahara sands, and thus the same solution: planting hundreds of millions of trees, a project that is already well advanced. Modja’s musical collaborators along her epic route include Senegal’s Didier Awadi, Nigeria’s Waje, Mali’s Songhoy Blues and Ethiopia’s Betty G. At times heart-wrenching but ultimately uplifting, this is a must-see. Dan MacCannell