Atlas Film Showcase
DESERTS
Synopsis
Long-time friends Mehdi and Hamid work for a collection agency. They travel through the villages of southern Morocco in their old car and share double rooms in shabby hotels. They are exactly the same size, wear the same suits and ties, have the same shoes. Paid a pittance, they try to play hardball to make money. One day, in a petrol station in the middle of the desert, a motorbike pulls up in front of them. A threatening man is handcuffed to the luggage rack. He is the Escaped Man. This meeting marks the beginning of an unexpected and mystical journey.
Florian Berutti
Véronique Lange, Faouzi Bensaïdi
Fehd Benchemsi, Abdelhadi Taleb, Rabii Benjhaile, Hajar Graigaa
Barney Production (France)
Saïd Hamich Benlarbi
[email protected]
NiKo Film (Germany)
Nicole Gerhards
[email protected]
Mont Fleuri Production (Morocco)
Saïd Hamich Benlarbi
[email protected]
Entre Chien et Loup (Belgium)
Sébastien Delloye
Urban Sales (France)
Frédéric Corvez
[email protected]
Director’s statement
Deserts is a modern twilight Western. Today, cars have replaced horses, and there is asphalt instead of dirt roads, electricity pylons and telecommunication towers rather than trees. Men and birds of prey, however, remain. The various chapters of the film bring together the values, traditions and humanity of the old with the brutality of the new. The border between them is porous, uncertain. A mystery hovers; characters and stories become entangled. I see the film as a round. The story is made up of breaks, displacements and roads criss-crossed at full speed. With Deserts, I want one story and its staging gradually to give way to another, and I want to leave plenty of room for the spectator’s imagination. The burlesque can be tinged with film noir, the social with suspense, and the real, when it welcomes abstraction, can open onto the cosmic.
Biographies
After working as a theatre director and actor, Faouzi Bensaïdi directed his first short film, La Falaise, which won twenty-four awards in international festivals. He then made the short films Le Mur, which won a prize at the Festival de Cannes, and Trajets, which won a prize at the Venice Film Festival. In 2003, his first feature-length film, Mille Mois, won two awards when it was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. In 2006, his second film, WWW—What a Wonderful World, was selected for Venice Days and distributed internationally. Death for Sale, his third feature, was selected for and won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival. His most recent film, Volubilis, was selected for Venice Days in 2017.
French-Moroccan director and producer Saïd Hamich Benlarbi is a graduate of La Fémis and a Lagardère Foundation laureate. He has collaborated with directors including Philippe Faucon (Harkis), Nabil Ayouch (Much Loved), Meryem Benm’Barek (Sofia) and Faouzi Bensaïdi (Volubilis, Deserts). Benlarbi is currently producing the first films of Steve Achiepo (Slumlord, to be released in 2023), Kamal Lazraq (Hounds), Camille Lugan (The Book of Joy) and Abdellah Taïa’s second film.
€1 700 000
€1 474 529
CCM, CNC, Institut Français, Eurimages, OIF, AFAC, DFI, FFA, MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, Nordmedia – Film-und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen, Arte ZDF, Tax Shelter, Condor Entertainment
November - December 2021, Casablanca, Khénifra, Midelt, Erfoud, Ouarzazate, Marrakech (Morocco)
PICTURE-LOCKED
World premiere expected: 2023