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Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Chad, 1961) moved to France in 1982 where he became
he first Chadian-born director of full-length films.
He rose to prominence with the short 25-minute Maral Tanie' (1994).
He directed in Chad his first full-length, and the first full-length in the
history of Chadian cinema: Bye Bye Africa (1999).
An exiled African filmmaker
(a fictionalized version of the director himself)
and his French wife are woken up by a phone-call. His mother has died and he will have to return to his country Chad, after a long absence. He takes with him a script he wants to film.
Arriving in Chad he tries to explain to his family his career as a filmmaker but they don’t understand it. He also finds out that the film he wants shoot in the country will be very difficult to make, because most movie theatres are closed and funding for production and distribution is almost impossible to find. While he realizes that the film industry is crumbling in Africa and sees the ignorance people show towards cinema one question crosses his mind “Does cinema have a future in here?”.
(Stub prepared by Guilherme Caeiro)
Abouna/Our Father (2002)
The story of two brothers searching for their missing father, it works as a metaphor for the situation of the country which after years of colonialism now as to rule itself.
The two brothers are Amine , who is about eight years old, and Tahir who is fifteen. They wake up one morning to find out that their father has left the family. Later, while watching a movie they think they see their father speaking to them so they steal the film to examine the frames.
Their mother find out they stole the film and punish them by sending them to Koranic school.
Unhappy about the situation they decide to escape and try to find their father.
(Stub prepared by Guilherme Caeiro)
Daratt / Dry Season (2006) is a Shakespeare-iean drama of
revenge and loneliness. The protagonist has to learn that revenge and justice
are not so easy to administer, and the culprit has to learn that life
cannot be rebuilt in one day.
The civil war had ended and the government decides to grant amnesty to all
war criminals. Riots erupt in the streets of a village that where atrocities
were committed. An old blind man calls him teenager grandson Atim and hands him the
gun that belonged to his father. The kid's mission is to kill Nassara, the
man who killed his father before he was born. The old man tells the kid that
he will wait for him in the desert.
Atim travels to the capital, and the journey is a reminder of the abuses
inflicted by the military to people like him: an officer traveling in the
same shared taxi threatens him with a gun, and two soldiers beat him for
urinating on a wall.
In the city he tracks down Nassara, who owns a bakery and
can only talk with the help of a device. He starts following
him and spying on him. Every morning Nassara gives charity to starving children.
Atim refuses charity. Nassara assumes that he wants work and gives him a job
at the bakery, but Atim's hostile behavior is puzzling to him.
Meanwhile, Atim has been befriended by Moussa, a thief who steals light bulbs
from public places to resell them at the market, but he finds the scam
pointless. The old man, instead, treats him like a son, teaching him how to
become a real baker. One day the old man loses his temper because Atim picks
up the cell phone during work and then apologizes confessing that he has done
much harm in his life for being so impulsive. Atim keeps carrying his father's
gun, ready to shoot Nassara any time, but never finding the strength to do it.
Atim chats with Nassara's very young wife Aicha, who is pregnant,
and learns that Nassara cannot
talk because someone tried to slip his throat during the civil war.
Aicha and Atim, almost the same age, make fun of Nassara, but he overhears
them and later Atim can hear Nassara beat his wife.
Life continues like this: Atim is getting better and better at baking,
and cannot find the strength to kill the man who killed his father.
Nassara is getting old and doesn't have children. One day he cuts his finger
while making bread. Another day he collapses with strong back pain.
Furthermore, there is now competition: a new bakery opened nearby and they have
a car that takes the bread to the customers. Nassara attacks the driver and gets
in trouble with the police.
It is obvious that he wants to find a son for his old age, and Atim looks like
he was sent by god. The boy now has to bake the break all by himsel and feels
proud of his achievement; at the same time, he resents being treated like
a son.
One night, drinking alone in a nightclub, he recognizes the officer who
threatened him in the share taxi, follows him outside and beats him unconscious.
When he gets back to the bakery (which is now his home), he finds Aicha in
tears: she has lost her baby. Nassara gets even more determined about
adopting Atim, but this causes Atim to panic. Atim decides to go back home
and Nassara simply says that he will follow him because he wants to ask his
father persmission to adopt him.
Nassara feels that his life has been a failure, that nobody loves him.
His only hope is Atim.
They drive through the desert to the place where grandfather is waiting.
When they get there, Nassara understands that Atim, the very boy he wanted
to adopt, has been sent by his grandfather to kill the killer of his father,
Nassara himself. However, the grandfather is blind and Atim only pretends
to execute Nassara. Then Atim takes his grandfather away, leaving Nassara
alone in the desert.
Sexe, Gombo et Beurre Sale'/ Sex, Okra and Salted Butter (2008)
Un Homme Qui Crie/ The Screaming Man (2010) is a Shakespeare-ian drama
set in the Sahara desert. That desert is no longer what it used to be: the film
indirectly reflects on the social, political and economic change that has come
(the new Chinese owners of the hotel, the collapse of religious faith, the
instability of the African countries)
The tragedy of a quiet man, who was "modernized" by competing in the Olympics,
is that now he has to face an ancient dilemma of
loyalty towards his family in an age in which people are asked to be
more loyal to their country and even to their employer.
At one point he says to his wife: "It's not me, it's the world that has changed".
To the end this is a very quiet tragedy: there is no spectacular grief,
and no overly pathetic touching moments.
Adam has grey hair: he used to ba a swimming champion. Now
he and his son Abdel work at a tourist resort (whose clientele is mostly
white), teaching tourists how to swim.
It is a good job but they are worried that the hotel has just been acquired
by a new company. At home Adam enjoys the company of his loving wife Mariam. They
eat together while the tv news is alerting the nation to the threat of some
rebels and hailing the efforts of the army to restore peace. Gruesome images
of dead soldiers are shown on tv.
The workers' fears come true: the new Chinese manager fires David,
Adam's grey-haired
Congolese friend, the chef. When it's Adam's turn, he tells her that the pool is his
whole life. Then his son is also called: he comes out upset but refuses to tell
his father what happened.
To make matters worse, Adam has not paid his contribution to the war against
the rebels. His old friend Ahmat, who is the chief of the district, reproaches
him.
The following day his old friend Etienne, a security guard, spits when Adam
rides his motorcycle through the gate to come to work. Adam is puzzled but
mintes later he learnes the reason.
The hotel management informs him that they don't need him anymore at the pool:
his own son is now in charge. Adam is given the job of the security guard.
It is a humiliating job of having to lift the barrier whenever a car needs
access or needs to leave.
Father and son have no choice but to accept. They both need the jobs.
Meanwhile, the chief hints at Adam that, if he has no money to contribute to
the fight, he should contribute his son: that's what the chief himself did.
Adam visits his Congolese friend at the hospital: after being fire, he had
a heart attack. Later he agrees to the chief's suggestion: two soldiers
come to draft Abdel with no warning in front of his powerless mother.
Adam watches from the witness. Not only did Adam satisfy the chief but he also
gets back his job at the pool. But the sense of guilt slowly becomes unbearable:
he betrayed his only son. To make matters worse, Abdel's girlfriend shows up:
she's the secret that Adam sensed Abdel was hiding from him. She is a singer
and she's pregnant of Abdel. Abdel's mother tells her that she can come and
live with them. Adam runs to the chief and offers to take Adbel's place in
the army. The chief sympathyzes because he had similar feelings about his own
son being drafted, but there is nothing they can do: they are too old for the
army.
Adam spends the night crying. He has lost faith in his god and cannot just
pray for his son.
A wounded soldier coming from the front brings a taped message by Abdel for
his girlfriend. Abdel describes in whispers the horrow of war, his
fear of dying, the temptation to run away and his pessimism about the
future of their child.
The situation gets worse: the government is losing to the rebels and it has
to declare a curfew. Nobody goes to work at the hotel except Adam.
There are no tourists either.
The manager thanks him but Adam is now in panic mode. In the evening he tries
to ride on bis motorcycle past the police block, but he is stopped and sent
back. Chaos is spreading. The following day thousands of people are fleeing
the town. Adam confesses to his son's girlfriend that he is the one who
turned his son to the army.
Adam can't resist anymore. He jumps on his motorbike again and this time gets
out of town, on a dusty highway, heading straight towards the front.
The only traffic is in the opposite direction. The road gets worse and worse.
Eventually he reaches the military camp and finds Adbel in a hospital tent,
severely wounded. At night the father literally kidnaps the son.
Then they start the long journey home on the sputtering motorbike.
When they stop to take a break, father and son confront each other: the son
knows who sent him to war. Now all he wants is to swim in the river.
The journey resumes. At the river Adam tries to wake up his son, but he is dead.
Adam pulls the lifeless body to the edge of the river and then lets it
float on the water.
Grigris (2013)
Une Saison en France/ A Season in France (2017) is an
immigrant drama.
Haroun turned to women for
Lingui les Liens Sacres/ Lingui the Sacred Bonds (2021), another
collaboration with cinematographer Mathieu Giombini.
This is a rousing portrait of silently rebellious women in an oppressing patriachal society.
The French language (instead of Arabic) becomes a sort of secret code for the
women that allows them to bond behind the back of the dominating men.
The women's tragedies take place in a combination of
scary empty streets at night,
claustrophobic narrow deserted alleys, and
alienating busy vast noisy motorcycle-infested boulevards.
A woman, Amina, works very hard at building objects
(kanoun stoves made of rubber tires)
that she then carries around town on her head to sell. When she gets home, her teenage daughter Maria/ Mamita is in a bad mood but doesn't say why.
They speak in French between themselves.
The following day her old grey-haired friend Brahim proposes to her (in Arabic): he is in love despite the fact that everybody else scorns her for being a single mother.
Later the imam scolds her (in Arabic) for missing morning prayer.
Amina decides to secretly follow her daughter and realizes that the girl doesn't go to school anymore.
The school's principal informs Amina (in French) that Maria is pregnant and
therefore she has been expelled from school.
Amina is now full of shame.
The girl wants an abortion. Amina is a devout Muslim and the religion forbids abortion. It is also illegal.
Maria walks to the public swimming pool where young people are partying.
Maria gets angry when a friend tells her that people are gossiping about her
pregnancy and runs away.
She doesn't come home and a desperate Amina asks Brahim for help to find her.
The following day Maria is trying to drown herself and saved by a group of men.
One of the men is kind enough to bring her home.
The daughter now opens up to her mother: Maria doesn't want to end up like her
mother, whom nobody respects.
A French-speaking doctor (the only male so far who speaks French) accepts to help them but Amina has to find a huge sum of money.
The imam can sense that Amina has a problem and tries in vain to find out what it is.
Marie now joins her mom making and selling objects in the streets of the town.
Looking for someone to perform an abortion for little money,
Amina runs into a woman who performs fake circumcisions, but Amina is afraid
to let her daughter get operated in a shack.
Amina gets desperate because she can't raise the money. She even offers herself
to Brahim in exchange for money, but this only alienates the man who truly loved her, besides humiliating her.
Amina neglects the mosque and the imam comes to "invite" her to an important
sermon, an invitation that sounds like an order. He doesn't look at her because
she is not covering her head and he doesn't shake women's hands.
Amina's sister Fanta comes to visit, asking for help (in French)
but Amina is resentful that Fanta and the whole family abandoned her when she got pregnant of Marie.
However, when she hears what the problem is, Amina relents: Fanta's husband wants
their daughter Maimouna circumcised. Amina sends Fanta to the woman who performs
fake circumcisions. In return, Fanta provides the money that Amina needs for the abortion.
However, Marie cannot get an abortion because the police raids the illegal abortion clinic.
One of the nurses gives Marie her phone number offering (in French) to perform the abortion,
but later the nurse has doubts because she has never done it before.
Amina encourages her to go ahead and the abortion goes well.
The nurse also prepares a
miscarriage certificate so that Marie can be admitted again to school.
So far throughout all this ordeal Marie has refused to tell Amina who the father was. Now she tells the nurse: it was Brahim who raped her.
(We now suspect that Brahim wanted to marry Amina simply to be near Amina's daughter).
The nurse convinces Marie to tell Amina. The nurse even returns the money to
Amina telling her that they are like sisters now.
Marie sees Amina walk out with a stick and wait in an alley for old Brahim.
She them beats him unconscious. Marie and Amina flees through the maze of alleys,
getting lost over and over again.
We then see the ceremony in which Fanta and her husband take their little
daughter to be circumcised. Jubiland women dance and clap their hands. Amina is
one of them. They all laugh. The husband thinks that they are celebrating the
seminal event in the life of the girl, when in fact they fooled him and are making fun of him: the woman performed a fake circumcision.
Marie returns to school.
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