Heremakono (Waiting for Happiness) Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania, 2002 Nouadhibou, a town of goers-to and waiters-for, where life creeps by at a painfully slow pace, is the stop-over for Abdallah, visiting his mother before he proceeds to Europe. Feeling removed from the goings on of the town – he barely speaks the local dialect, and dresses in western fashions – Abdallah quietly observes the events, or lack thereof, in this unmoving, remote outpost, all the while yearning for a more exciting life abroad. Sissako’s wistful, sand-swept narrative invites us to consider that the happiness we so eagerly await, or chase after, might have been with us all along.