'' Waiting for Happiness '' ( original title : '' Heremakono '' ) is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Abderrahmane Sissako . Main characters are a student , who has returned to his home in Nouadhibou , an electrician and his child apprentice , and the local women . The film is characterized by a succession of scenes of the daily life of the characters which are unique to their particular African and Arab cultures , while borrowing from tropes of Tayeb Saleh 's Season of Migration to the North ( موسم الهجرة إلى الشمال ) . The viewer must interpret the scenes without much help from narrator or plot , while the structure of the film hangs on a series of mundane but visually arresting moments , many of which are repeated in other works in Abderrahmane Sissako 's opus , including scenes at a barber shop and a photo booth , also present in his earlier La Vie Sur Terre and later Timbuktu . The film presents typical Mauritanian moments of beauty , struggle , alienation , and humor , which are experienced by groups socially divided from each other , such as Bidhan women drinking tea and gossiping , West African migrants passing through Mauritania to get to Europe ( and finding an unsuccessful comrade washed ashore ) . The young protagonist who has returned interacts with all of these groups as an outsider , as he struggles to remember even his own Hassaniya Arabic dialect , but prefers instead French . Many of the themes and characters presage Sissako 's 2014 film Timbuktu , and both explore liminal Sahel identities authentically situated in everyday life . Waiting for Happiness premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section
2002 Cannes Film Festival
2002 Cannes Film Festival
Waiting for Happiness