FILMS/
SOUNDS OF SAND
Si le vent soulève les sables
World Cinema
Belgium/France, 2006, 96 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sat, Apr 28 / 09:30 / Kabuki / SOUN28K
Mon, Apr 30 / 04:00 / Kabuki / SOUN30K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Marion Hänsel
- prod
-
Marion Hänsel, Cedomir Kolar
- scr
-
Marion Hänsel
- cam
-
Walter Vanden Ende
- editor
-
Michèle Hubinon
- mus
-
René-Marc Bini
- cast
-
Issaka Sawadogo, Carole Karemera, Asma Nouman Aden
- source
-
Man’s Films Productions, Avenue Mostinck 65, B-1150 Brussels, Belgium FAX: +32-2-771-9612 EMAIL: manfilms@skynet.be
Harrowing in its implications yet deeply humane in its testimony to the endurance of hope under impossible circumstances, Marion Hänsel’s beautifully observed family saga takes place beneath the unforgiving sun of East Africa, where the increasing scarcity of free-flowing water is devastating entire communities and causing civil unrest. The well in their village having run dry, stoic Rahne, his steadfast wife and three children pack their meager belongings and ragtag livestock—treated as members of the family—and head into the desert in search of water and hospitable terrain. They encounter corrupt military officials, crazed freedom fighters, a treacherous landscape riddled with land mines, and other tribulations that cruelly test familial bonds (one scene recalls the pivotal event in Sophie’s Choice). As thirst deepens and tragedy strikes, Rahne and his family—particularly adorable daughter Shasha, who sees into the spirit world—endure indignities all too common to the refugee plight yet maintain belief in the possibility, however slim, of a better tomorrow. Based on Marc Durin-Valois’s award-winning novel Chamelle, Hänsel’s carefully restrained drama eschews cinematic stereotypes of Africa as the exotic "dark continent," focusing instead on particulars—a lone airplane’s vapor trail slicing through an endless blue sky, the subtle yet telling shifts in her nonprofessional actors’ facial expressions, the disarmingly soulful gaze of a camel in repose—that resonate universally. As both a stirring dramatization of one family’s travails and a timely wake-up call to the reality of resource shortages in Africa, Sounds of Sand reveals poetry in every grain.
—Steven Jenkins
In French with English subtitles. Sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Wells Fargo.