fbpx Biennale Cinema 2017 | Nacer Khemir - Les baliseurs du désert / El-haimoune (Wanderers of the Desert)
La Biennale di Venezia

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Nacer Khemir - Les baliseurs du désert / El-haimoune (Wanderers of the Desert)



Tunisie, France (1984) / 95’
language Arabic
cast Nacer Khemir
, Hédi Daoud
, Sonia Ichti, Hassen Khalsi, Noureddine Kasbaoui, Soufiane Makni, Jamila Ourabi, Mohsen Zazaa
screenplay Nacer Khemir

cinemtaographer Georges Barsky
editor Moufida Tlatli
production designer Robert Narbonne, Arno Heins
costume designer Maud Perl

music 
Fethi Zgonda
sound Faouzi Thabet
restoration curated by Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique
film laboratory Cinémathèque Royale
de Belgique

 

SYNOPSIS

A young teacher is sent to an isolated village in the Tunisian desert, but instead of devoting himself to teaching the man vanishes in pursuit of enigmas, losing himself in the space and time of the fables and legends of ancient Arab culture. The man falls in love with the local sheikh’s daughter and lets himself be carried away by this world of sand and the Andalusian songs of the baliseurs: wanderers of the desert who spring from the sand and disappear into the sand, tracing an invisible line of separation between reality and dream. In this film magic and reality are blended to celebrate the beauty of the desert.

CRITIC'S NOTES

The first film directed by the storyteller, illustrator and poet Nacer Khemir takes an oral legend as its starting point and turns it into a complex allegory. The director lines up mysteries, deceptions and questions without giving answers, but controls his labyrinthine tale with an unobtrusive incantatory skill, favoring the problem of time over that of space. Plain, bare and elliptical, the Tunisian’s directorial debut pays tribute to the splendor of Arab culture through a studied and painterly composition of the shots and sequences and a screenwriting steeped in poetry.

Sala Volpi

LUNGOMARE MARCONI
30126 LIDO DI VENEZIA
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Biennale Cinema
Biennale Cinema