I already walked into the New Horizons Cinema in Wroclaw with high expectations and that usually is not a very good thing, there was a buzz in the festival and all the screenings where booked to see this film.
I don't really know if this is a review or more of a description of the sheer mouth opening energy that took over the entire audience. Admittedly when you set out to go watch a film about an Albino boy in East Africa, hunted for the color of his skin by witch doctors who make good business out of trading his parts into fabled miracles, well you expect something particular.
Make no mistake about it, this is not an Africa film or AN ISSUE film, this is a global subject, very well hidden and integrated into the surface of this skin. I cannot pin point the moment I fell in, but somewhere in the first ten minutes a sense of real trauma kicked in and I felt like "now I must deal with it". I realized this ride is intense and instead of forcing myself on it I had to let it lead me and well it did - Into the darkest most claustrophobic feeling of isolation, suspicion and being hunted, Then suddenly shaken into the lightest and most beautiful joy of friendship with a ghost like boy called "Salum". The film rattles you from one scene to the other, the cuts are aggressive, the colors the spaces the violence is always kept through this perspective of this boy Alias, played by the incredible Hamisi Bazili. How the hell did they find this Kid?
Mini Spoiler here - My take on this film is that it starts from a dream and a very strong Trauma and the rest of the film you the audience as the main character must find a way to connect to reality with the trauma pounding the drums, non stop. Everyone is out to get you! and at the end, well, another spoiler alert! Thats the choice you must make in which world you wish to stay. THE STORY - (Spoiler Alert) A boy, "Alias", experiences his father's very graphic and brutal death is sent by his mother to the big city under the care of his not very reliable uncle. The uncle is in more trouble then we know and very quickly the city is no different then the bush. Add to that a touch of almost incest and a ghost child narrating, not to mention, witchcraft. All that under the eye of a camera that feels like it is coming from the vortex of the another dimension. Perhaps the camera is a character in itself.
Deshe weaves his way through what would have been a very conventional direct storyline in the most elusive unexpected way and somehow the music, the image and the thoughts of the film all become one. This is nothing like anything you have seen, or experienced and it is by far on the top of my list for the year. A very Excellent film.
There is something Russian Hungarian, Red and the White, about this film or that's just the Polish in me :) Give this film your attention.
I don't really know if this is a review or more of a description of the sheer mouth opening energy that took over the entire audience. Admittedly when you set out to go watch a film about an Albino boy in East Africa, hunted for the color of his skin by witch doctors who make good business out of trading his parts into fabled miracles, well you expect something particular.
Make no mistake about it, this is not an Africa film or AN ISSUE film, this is a global subject, very well hidden and integrated into the surface of this skin. I cannot pin point the moment I fell in, but somewhere in the first ten minutes a sense of real trauma kicked in and I felt like "now I must deal with it". I realized this ride is intense and instead of forcing myself on it I had to let it lead me and well it did - Into the darkest most claustrophobic feeling of isolation, suspicion and being hunted, Then suddenly shaken into the lightest and most beautiful joy of friendship with a ghost like boy called "Salum". The film rattles you from one scene to the other, the cuts are aggressive, the colors the spaces the violence is always kept through this perspective of this boy Alias, played by the incredible Hamisi Bazili. How the hell did they find this Kid?
Mini Spoiler here - My take on this film is that it starts from a dream and a very strong Trauma and the rest of the film you the audience as the main character must find a way to connect to reality with the trauma pounding the drums, non stop. Everyone is out to get you! and at the end, well, another spoiler alert! Thats the choice you must make in which world you wish to stay. THE STORY - (Spoiler Alert) A boy, "Alias", experiences his father's very graphic and brutal death is sent by his mother to the big city under the care of his not very reliable uncle. The uncle is in more trouble then we know and very quickly the city is no different then the bush. Add to that a touch of almost incest and a ghost child narrating, not to mention, witchcraft. All that under the eye of a camera that feels like it is coming from the vortex of the another dimension. Perhaps the camera is a character in itself.
Deshe weaves his way through what would have been a very conventional direct storyline in the most elusive unexpected way and somehow the music, the image and the thoughts of the film all become one. This is nothing like anything you have seen, or experienced and it is by far on the top of my list for the year. A very Excellent film.
There is something Russian Hungarian, Red and the White, about this film or that's just the Polish in me :) Give this film your attention.