During the buildup to Omar al-Bashir’s ousting, an exploited manual worker at the Merowe dam develops a strange supernatural life
Lebanese artist and film-maker Ali Cherri, artist-in-residence at London’s National Gallery in 2021, makes his feature film debut with a visually striking, ruminative and mysterious piece of work, a kind of magic social realist vision. The script was developed with two French cinema heavyweights, producer and screenwriter Geoffroy Grison and director Bertrand Bonello and it premiered at Cannes in 2022 in the Directors’ Fortnight section.
It is a drama teetering on the verge of a heatstroke hallucination, with flourishes of violence. The setting is the hydroelectric Merowe dam in northern Sudan on the Nile; it’s 2019, and President Omar al-Bashir is about to be deposed by the army after months of protests. Maher (Maher El Khair) is working by the riverbank making bricks in the burning sun, for a foreman...
Lebanese artist and film-maker Ali Cherri, artist-in-residence at London’s National Gallery in 2021, makes his feature film debut with a visually striking, ruminative and mysterious piece of work, a kind of magic social realist vision. The script was developed with two French cinema heavyweights, producer and screenwriter Geoffroy Grison and director Bertrand Bonello and it premiered at Cannes in 2022 in the Directors’ Fortnight section.
It is a drama teetering on the verge of a heatstroke hallucination, with flourishes of violence. The setting is the hydroelectric Merowe dam in northern Sudan on the Nile; it’s 2019, and President Omar al-Bashir is about to be deposed by the army after months of protests. Maher (Maher El Khair) is working by the riverbank making bricks in the burning sun, for a foreman...
- 5/8/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Following Maher (Maher El Kahir), a Sudanese bricklayer, Ali Cherri’s The Dam oscillates between the natural and fantastic. Maher works by the Merowe Dam, a project near the Nile River that displaced nearly 70,000 residents. He goes about his days without much complaint, zombie-like in duty. In his free time he builds a giant mud sculpture—a being that he cannot stop adding to, somewhat alive and somewhat dead.
Maher’s story exists amongst a political, militant coup of the Sudanese leader. Political ramifications play out behind these bricklayers, on radios and television screens, only subtly influencing their everyday life by seeping into their thoughts. So Maher gets away from it all, called to a presence that visits him in his dreams, a pull towards the mystical.
Beautiful in image, yet void of traditional narrative, Cherri’s film drifts towards a semblance of impact. It’s ephemeral in its interest in poetic mysticism,...
Maher’s story exists amongst a political, militant coup of the Sudanese leader. Political ramifications play out behind these bricklayers, on radios and television screens, only subtly influencing their everyday life by seeping into their thoughts. So Maher gets away from it all, called to a presence that visits him in his dreams, a pull towards the mystical.
Beautiful in image, yet void of traditional narrative, Cherri’s film drifts towards a semblance of impact. It’s ephemeral in its interest in poetic mysticism,...
- 10/21/2022
- by Michael Frank
- The Film Stage
Following the Main Slate and Spotlight announcements, the 60th New York Film Festival has unveiled its Currents section. The slate of boundary-pushing work features Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp, Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh, Alessandro Comodin’s The Adventures of Gigi the Law, Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós’s Dry Ground Burning, Ruth Beckermann’s Mutzenbacher, and Ashley McKenzie’s Queens of the Qing Dynasty, plus new shorts by Bi Gan, Mark Jenkin, Simón Velez, Nicolás Pereda, Courtney Stephens, Ben Russell, and more.
“Each Currents lineup is an attempt to distill the spirit of innovation and playfulness in contemporary cinema, and this is, by design, the most expansive section of the festival,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director, New York Film Festival. “There are familiar names here—including multiple filmmakers who will be known to NYFF and Flc audiences—as well as some electrifying new talents,...
“Each Currents lineup is an attempt to distill the spirit of innovation and playfulness in contemporary cinema, and this is, by design, the most expansive section of the festival,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director, New York Film Festival. “There are familiar names here—including multiple filmmakers who will be known to NYFF and Flc audiences—as well as some electrifying new talents,...
- 8/18/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Lebanese director Cherri is also a celebrated artist whose work is currently showing at The National Gallery and Venice Biennale
Paris-based company Indie Sales has acquired world sales rights to Lebanese director and artist Ali Cherri’s first feature The Dam, ahead of its world premiere in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight (May 18-27).
As a first film, it is also a contender for the Caméra d’Or covering all the first films in Official Selection and the parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.
The drama is set against the backdrop of the 2018 Sudanese revolution, near the Merowe Dam in the north of the country.
Paris-based company Indie Sales has acquired world sales rights to Lebanese director and artist Ali Cherri’s first feature The Dam, ahead of its world premiere in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight (May 18-27).
As a first film, it is also a contender for the Caméra d’Or covering all the first films in Official Selection and the parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.
The drama is set against the backdrop of the 2018 Sudanese revolution, near the Merowe Dam in the north of the country.
- 4/22/2022
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Karlovy Vary’s industry days continued today with the Pitch & Feedback initiative, including the new film from My Dog Killer director Mira Fornay, alongside the Docu Talents from the East showcase.
Czech and Slovak filmmakers presented seven projects in development, which are considered to have international co-production potential.
Among these was Cook, F**k, Kill (Frogs With No Tongues), the third feature from Slovakian filmmaker Mira Fornay, described an absurdist drama about domestic violence.
First pitched at the Sofia Meetings in March, the film follows her 2009 feature debut Little Foxes and 2013’s My Dog Killer, which won a Tiger Award at last year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam and was Slovakia’s submission for the Best Foreign-Language Oscar.
Cook, F**k, Kill is produced by Fornay’s company, Mirafox, and is slated to shoot in spring 2015 for release in spring 2016 with a budget of €1.15m.
Fornay said of the film: “I believe that my absurd drama rendered...
Czech and Slovak filmmakers presented seven projects in development, which are considered to have international co-production potential.
Among these was Cook, F**k, Kill (Frogs With No Tongues), the third feature from Slovakian filmmaker Mira Fornay, described an absurdist drama about domestic violence.
First pitched at the Sofia Meetings in March, the film follows her 2009 feature debut Little Foxes and 2013’s My Dog Killer, which won a Tiger Award at last year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam and was Slovakia’s submission for the Best Foreign-Language Oscar.
Cook, F**k, Kill is produced by Fornay’s company, Mirafox, and is slated to shoot in spring 2015 for release in spring 2016 with a budget of €1.15m.
Fornay said of the film: “I believe that my absurd drama rendered...
- 7/8/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Toronto -- Tough times have coin-starved indie producers hopping from the Toronto International Film Festival to IFP in New York City, by way of the Strategic Partners co-production conference in Halifax.
Strategic Partners organizer Jan Miller points to a "higher caliber" of producers, sales agents, funders and broadcasters in Halifax from Friday to Sunday as traditional financing sources these days go dry or are depleted.
"Everyone has limited funds and limited time as they look to grab people between Toronto and Ifp," she said of this year's producer matchmaking.
About 30 projects have been invited to Halifax to participate in Canada's biggest film financing forum during the Atlantic Film Festival.
Montreal-based producer Melissa Malkin of Silo Corp. will be shopping in both Halifax and New York "White Circus," a live action/animated feature from Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, who wrote and directed the Academy Award-nominated short animated drama "Madame Tulti Pulti.
Strategic Partners organizer Jan Miller points to a "higher caliber" of producers, sales agents, funders and broadcasters in Halifax from Friday to Sunday as traditional financing sources these days go dry or are depleted.
"Everyone has limited funds and limited time as they look to grab people between Toronto and Ifp," she said of this year's producer matchmaking.
About 30 projects have been invited to Halifax to participate in Canada's biggest film financing forum during the Atlantic Film Festival.
Montreal-based producer Melissa Malkin of Silo Corp. will be shopping in both Halifax and New York "White Circus," a live action/animated feature from Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, who wrote and directed the Academy Award-nominated short animated drama "Madame Tulti Pulti.
- 9/16/2009
- by By Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARIS -- The Vanishing Point (Ce que mes yeux ont vu) is a cerebral, visually impressive reflection on concealment and revelation in art rather than a Da Vinci Code-style action film. Laurent de Bartillat's debut feature may have enough crossover appeal to ensure moderate boxoffice at home and abroad.
Art history student Lucie (Sylvie Testud) is fascinated by the presence of a mysterious woman, invariably seen from behind, in the works of the great French 18th century painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. She embarks on an investigation to determine the figure's identity, a quest that leads to a series of discoveries and a visit to Belgium for an auction.
As she becomes increasingly absorbed in her mission, Lucie is given a vital clue by Vincent James Thierree), a deaf-mute she sees performing mime in the street outside the photocopy shop where she works. Meanwhile her academic supervisor Dussart (Jean-Pierre Marielle) appears bent on discouraging her from developing her theory that the woman was an actress, Charlotte Desmares, with whom Watteau was in love.
Perpetually broke, Lucie is in debt to her landlord, constantly borrows from her actress mother (Christiane Millet) and has to sell off a family heirloom in order to buy a painting that appears to hold the key to the mystery.
"Freely inspired" by the true story of Watteau's life, the movie imagines the discovery of a previously unknown work by the painter and seeks to establish a series of parallels, notably one between Lucie's mounting obsession with Watteau and the loss, when she was a child, of her mountaineer father.
Dussart, we also learn, lost his wife as a result of his own obsession with Watteau, while Vincent has an obsession with the river Bievre, a waterway that continues to flow beneath the pavements of Paris's left bank despite being paved over in the 19th century.
The movie has weaknesses as these connections often appear forced and there are holes and obscurities in the storyline. Yet De Bartillat and co-writer Alain Ross expertly convey their own painterly obsessions. (There are echoes here of Peter Greenaway's early movies.) Every picture tells a story, not simply about the subject but about the painter and even, digging deeper, about the person who is examining it. The frequent dissolves between paintings and Paris exteriors also add to an impression that mystery -- or history -- lies beneath every paving stone and every stroke of paint.
Testud, one of the brightest of France's young acting talents, is faultless as the dogged Lucie, while Marielle -- whom moviegoers will recognize as the slain museum curator in The Da Vinci Code -- is enjoying an Indian summer in an acting career going back half a century. Thierree is underused though, his character fading from the picture in the second half, one of the least satisfying aspects of a movie that rewards and frustrates in equal measure.
THE VANISHING POINT
Shiloh Films, 2.1 Films, Cofinova 3
Credits:
Director: Laurent de Bartillat
Writers: Laurent de Bartillat, Alain Ross
Producers: Geoffroy Grison, Fred Bellaiche
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Selva
Production designer: Sandra Castello
Music: David Moreau
Editor: Tina Baz Legal
Cast:
Sylvie Testud: Lucie
Jean-Pierre Marielle: Dussart
James Thierree: Vincent
Agathe Dronne: Garance
Christiane Millet: Lucie's mother
Miglan Mirtchev: Ivan
Chantal Trichet: nurse
Jean-Gabriel Nordmann: Gasque
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Art history student Lucie (Sylvie Testud) is fascinated by the presence of a mysterious woman, invariably seen from behind, in the works of the great French 18th century painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. She embarks on an investigation to determine the figure's identity, a quest that leads to a series of discoveries and a visit to Belgium for an auction.
As she becomes increasingly absorbed in her mission, Lucie is given a vital clue by Vincent James Thierree), a deaf-mute she sees performing mime in the street outside the photocopy shop where she works. Meanwhile her academic supervisor Dussart (Jean-Pierre Marielle) appears bent on discouraging her from developing her theory that the woman was an actress, Charlotte Desmares, with whom Watteau was in love.
Perpetually broke, Lucie is in debt to her landlord, constantly borrows from her actress mother (Christiane Millet) and has to sell off a family heirloom in order to buy a painting that appears to hold the key to the mystery.
"Freely inspired" by the true story of Watteau's life, the movie imagines the discovery of a previously unknown work by the painter and seeks to establish a series of parallels, notably one between Lucie's mounting obsession with Watteau and the loss, when she was a child, of her mountaineer father.
Dussart, we also learn, lost his wife as a result of his own obsession with Watteau, while Vincent has an obsession with the river Bievre, a waterway that continues to flow beneath the pavements of Paris's left bank despite being paved over in the 19th century.
The movie has weaknesses as these connections often appear forced and there are holes and obscurities in the storyline. Yet De Bartillat and co-writer Alain Ross expertly convey their own painterly obsessions. (There are echoes here of Peter Greenaway's early movies.) Every picture tells a story, not simply about the subject but about the painter and even, digging deeper, about the person who is examining it. The frequent dissolves between paintings and Paris exteriors also add to an impression that mystery -- or history -- lies beneath every paving stone and every stroke of paint.
Testud, one of the brightest of France's young acting talents, is faultless as the dogged Lucie, while Marielle -- whom moviegoers will recognize as the slain museum curator in The Da Vinci Code -- is enjoying an Indian summer in an acting career going back half a century. Thierree is underused though, his character fading from the picture in the second half, one of the least satisfying aspects of a movie that rewards and frustrates in equal measure.
THE VANISHING POINT
Shiloh Films, 2.1 Films, Cofinova 3
Credits:
Director: Laurent de Bartillat
Writers: Laurent de Bartillat, Alain Ross
Producers: Geoffroy Grison, Fred Bellaiche
Director of photography: Jean-Marc Selva
Production designer: Sandra Castello
Music: David Moreau
Editor: Tina Baz Legal
Cast:
Sylvie Testud: Lucie
Jean-Pierre Marielle: Dussart
James Thierree: Vincent
Agathe Dronne: Garance
Christiane Millet: Lucie's mother
Miglan Mirtchev: Ivan
Chantal Trichet: nurse
Jean-Gabriel Nordmann: Gasque
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 12/10/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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