Abdelhak Najib also wanted to film what cannot be said and which must only be suggested. It is also the same requirement that governed the choice of actors and actresses in this film.
Feature film: The Moroccan writer and journalist, Abdelhak Najib, has just released his feature film, entitled “The Escapees of Tindouf”. A punchy film of rare acuity, without pathos or filler. A journey of courage and sacrifice, through a story that is all too human.
The premiere of the feature film “Les évadés de Tindouf” by director Abdelhak Najib, which took place on November 9, 2024 in Casablanca, was a great success in more than one respect. A full house, distinguished guests, an evening of great cinema, with a remarkable film in terms of subject matter, treatment, direction of actors, music, editing and staging, with a solidly shot scenario.
“Les escapés de Tindouf” is a film against oblivion. A film about the silent bravery of a few women and men who never gave up. It’s a film about the strength of the spirit in the face of barbed wire and murderous ideologies. It is a film which revives collective memory and revisits the history of Morocco, the Sahara, the borders with Algeria, the Tindouf camps and the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Polisario junta. It’s a daring film in more than one way. First, screenwriter and director Abdelhak Najib returns to his novel “A Shadow on the Sand” and adapts it for the big screen. Already the literary story is powerful, with a unique voice which tells, which spins the narration and which is lost in the emptiness of the desert, like a ghost which will come to haunt us to remind us that we must never forget.
Then there is the treatment given to this story of a handful of women and men, who spent more than 25 years in Polisario prisons, and who one evening decided to take, whatever the cost. , the path to freedom. As always, with Abdelhak Najib, for those who have read his novels, freedom comes first through redemption. You have to earn it. We must seek it at the edge of death, where life can be born. Like these inmates, who defied fate and took the desert paths to find their land. The film tells the story of this human fresco in three distinct periods. The present time, in 2024, when the son (played by Abdelhak Najib), decides to open the chamber of secrets to follow in the footsteps of his late father, who was buried in the sand. 1974, when a group of Moroccans were ambushed by the Polisario militias and taken to the Tindouf jails, where they would pass from one camp to another, for twenty-five long years of torture. Finally, there is the year 2000, the day before the feast of sacrifice, when the five survivors of the death camps will escape. Abdelhak Najib takes us from one era to another, through a clear narration, with a solid base, that of the image that speaks, with great parsimony in the dialogues, all sublimated by very beautiful music, composed by the great Moroccan violinist, the conductor of the Berlin Opera, Monia Rizkallah, who gave the images that parade a heroic, profoundly human dimension. Original music written for the film, with additional music signed by the great musician Mohamed Jbara and the young talent Ayoub Lahkimi. It is this structure with several layers, between text, dialogue, music and the silences which punctuate them, which gives this film all its strength.
From the moment when the son sets off in search of his father’s buried past, to the freedom found in the final scene at the border, through the son’s wandering in the desert, through the confrontations between the corporals of Tindouf and the Moroccan prisoners, by the father’s friend who completes the lost story of the men, the film advances in stages, offering us an inner journey, that of each protagonist, who must draw from the depths of his guts his last resources to not abdicate. From one scene to another, the pace is sustained, in a film which remains, ultimately, very intimate, moving from the confined spaces of the cells to the infinite expanses of the Sahara. Even, on a chromatic level, the director wanted to have a composition that corresponds to each period: the past, the present and the in-between. Without forgetting this dream time, very dear to Abdelhak Najib, which takes us from a cruel reality to a waking dream, without ever emphasizing the edges which separate reality from the mirage. Which allows us to see a film that is close to the heart, which goes to the essential, which is interested in contradictory feelings, which translates, with subtlety, silent emotions whose fury reaches us, with force. All this alchemy is underpinned by photography as close as possible to the characters, with framings that fluctuate between the wide and the tight, while taking care to maintain a certain distance from the unsaid, which is here underlined by the light and its variations and by the silences which punctuate this cinematographic work which is both sincere and simple in its composition.
The director is not burdened in any way with lengths and redundancies. Throughout the film’s sequences, he maintains a rigorous balance, which denotes a certain mastery of the art of filming and telling a story through images. Some will say that this is normal for a film critic like Abdelhak Najib, who has always loved great cinema and who met great figures of the seventh art during his career as a critic. But between saying it and seeing it on the big screen, there is an enormous step that Abdelhak Najib has crossed with finesse, avoiding the pitfalls which can, often, penalize any cinematographic work which does not manage to find the right balance between the text and its visual support, the image. On this point, we can trust the director of “Les évadés de Tindouf”, who knows the deep nuances between saying and showing and reading, without words, by creating images that carry meaning and what is left unsaid. . Because, seeing this work, we see to what extent Abdelhak Najib was keen to film what cannot be said and which must only be suggested. It is also the same requirement that governed the choice of actors and actresses in this film.
First Mohamed Choubi, who gives a certain magic to his role as a former survivor, who has sunk into oblivion, to Driss Roukhe, the corporal torturer, who thinks he is entrusted with a mission, through Kamal Haimoud, touching as a crippled inmate, who goes to the limits of himself to get by, just like Dean Mountaki, the young Polisario militiaman who wants at all costs to resemble his mentor, the great corporal, and who invents methods of torture of unspeakable inhumanity. Without forgetting two actresses who excelled in this film, two doctors in life, who played the two female prisoners, namely Imane Kendili and Alia Bencheikh, both accurate in their interpretation and above all credible as women who never give in. It is this overall cohesion that makes this film one of the most daring and accomplished, opening a new genre, that of the historical war film, treated as a human drama brought to its climax.
Par Ayoub El Aiassi
Director and theater director
