Selected at the Filmmakers’ Fortnight (2023 Cannes Film Festival), doubly awarded at the Valencia Film Festival (best actors / best director), the sixth feature film by director, screenwriter and actor Faouzi Bensaïdi arrives in national cinemas.
Critically acclaimed, “Deserts” is a “modern and twilight western” which combines road movie and thriller, in a narrative structure constructed in two parts.
Synopsis:
The story begins around Mehdi and Hamid, two long-time friends who work for a collection agency in Casablanca. They are sent to distant villages in the deep south of Morocco to extract money from over-indebted families…
Shot in 2021 in the Marrakech region, the film stars the duo Fehd Benchemsi / Abdelhadi Taleb, and brings together a cast faithful to the cinematographic universe of Faouzi Bensaïdi: Rabii Benjhaile, Hajar Graigaa, Mohamed Choubi, Nezha Rahil, Abdelghani Sannak, Nordine Saaden, Mohamed Hmimsa, Brahim Khai, Zhor Slimani and Abdellah Chicha.
Director’s intentions:
“The different chapters of the film collide the values, traditions and humanity of the old with the brutality of the new. The border is porous, uncertain. A mystery hovers, the characters and stories become entangled. I see the film as a round. The story is made up of ruptures, displacements and roads traveled at full speed. With Déserts, I wanted one story and its setting to gradually slip away in favor of another and to leave ample room for the viewer’s imagination. Burlesque could be tinged with film noir, social with suspense, and reality, welcoming abstraction, could open onto the cosmic,” says Faouzi Bensaïdi.
