French filmmaker Mohamed Ouzine returns to the land of his roots, in the barren frontier between Algeria and Morocco, where he is confronted with his own ambiguous relationship to the region.
He meets his cousin Samir, who together with his donkey, smuggles oil from his village in Algeria to the other side of the border. Samir dreams of a different life, far away from here, but the endless horizon impedes his imagining a clear objective. As Mohamed tries to capture the overwhelming beauty of this landscape with his camera, Samir asks him out loud what he can possibly see in all these grey rocks. The confrontation with Samir is just as hard as the filmmaker’s confrontation with himself.
2015, 61’, 16:9, Algeria
Bio
Mohamed Ouzine came to cinema by way of photography. His first films were centred around 'sociological' themes: everyday life in a prison and the relationships between three women prisoners and their children in Une heure seulement. He went on to film a community of evangelist Romas who set off on the roads of France in search of God, and caravan sites, in Caravane. He then got caught up in the question of his own origins, which became the subject of a scenario for a narrative film called La guerre de Tarik, before making Samir in the dust.
We 15.03, 19:00 Introduction with fingerfood
Free, but reservation recommended!
