4 ideas
Commissaire Habib, a Bamako police investigator, is sent into Dogon country after a series of deaths that the village attributes to spirits. The case pits a state detective's demand for a human culprit against a community that already has a complete supernatural explanation and little reason to cooperate with an outsider from the capital. (Only the premise is stated here; specific plot details and the resolution are not asserted.)
A detective plot is a way to tour a society. Each interview exposes how that milieu handles power, poverty and belief, so solving the crime also explains the country.
A modern postcolonial state's legal authority, carried by a police officer, does not arrive intact in communities governed by older structures. Village elders, custom and belief decide what counts as evidence and who may speak. The investigator must negotiate legitimacy rather than simply exercise it, and the state's law holds only as far as locals choose to recognize it.
When a community credits deaths to spirits, the belief works as a full alternative account of causation, not just an error to be corrected. It can shield human actors, keep the social order stable, or express judgments the community will not voice openly. Setting it aside with rationalism alone misses what it does socially, and that function is often where the real motive lies.