The Great Green Wall: A drive-by tour of bio-resistance to the Sahara, with African music stars a'plenty

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

While the marriage of pop music and African disaster relief was consummated long ago with Live Aid, The Great Green Wall takes that relationship on a cross-continent road trip with actual African musical stars..

The issue today is desertification, the expansion of the Sahara into places it’s never been. And plagues we may think of as separate issues – famine, the plight of refugees, civil unrest, collapsing governments, and the rampages of insurgent groups like Boko Haram, are shown to all be branches on one desiccated tree, driven by ecological collapse.

Malian singer Inna Modja walks the line between the Sahara and the trees in The Great Green Wall

And, as it happens, The Great Green Wall is about trees. Specifically, it’s about the plan to seed the continent at the sub-Saharan Sahel zone with greenery, described by some of the engineers as, not so much a wall, as a “mosaic” of plant-life and biological resistance to this Global Warming-induced invasion.

Against this backdrop, we meet Malian pop star and activist Inna Modja, who starts from Senegal variously visiting the poor and traumatized and connecting with fellow African musicians like Songhoy Blues, Betty G and Waje, each representing a different country and style. They join her caravan, playing and improvising tunes together (when the film doesn’t go directly to Modja’s own slick music videos, which at times seem out of place and self-promotional).

Some powerful entities have gotten behind The Great Green Wall. Its executive producers include Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (the latter being a global problem affecting the globe from Asia to the Southwest U.S.). At one point, Modja even addresses the U.N. General Assembly.

But key to the success of a movie like this is a balance between the sweetener (the music) and the substance. As it begins, so much time is spent in concert and in studio, I wondered if we’d ever see anybody pick up a shovel and plant a tree.

But eventually we do. And the trip across country is variously heart-wrenching and confounding. Some of the more affluent countries turn out to be slow to do their part in this green resistance, which should be much farther along by now. And others, like tragic Ethiopia, are already working miracles.

All the above connected tragedies turn up on the voyage, including meetings with escaped child brides abducted by Boko Haram and child soldiers who were likewise “enlisted.” 

The Great Green Wall is a but a snack for fans of world music, and may leave concerned viewers demanding more. But it’s an introduction to an intriguing concept, and people engaging in a literally life-or-death green war.

The Great Green Wall. Directed by Jared P. Scott. Starring Inna Modja, Songhoy Blues, Betty G. Currently streaming nationwide via Documentary Online Cinema.