Home
sign up| features / feature |
 content by: editor |
 daratt director interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Rough justice for Chad. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s new feature, Daratt, is another in which the director seeks to explore the highs and lows of life in Chad. Haroun originally made an international splash on the festival circuit with his documentary Bye-Bye Africa (1999), which he made when he returned to Chad for the first time in a decade, following the death of his mother. Daratt (Dry Season) is a character-led movie similar in tone to the exquisite Abouna (2002). It starts with a radio announcement to the effect that, after decades of civil war, the government is giving an amnesty to criminals. Infuriated by the news, Gumar Abatcha (Khayar Oumar Deffalah) orders his 16-year-old grandson Atim (Ali Barkai) to avenge the death of his father. As soon as Chad’s dry season starts, Atim leaves his village and goes to the town in search of Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro). Atim quickly finds him and takes a job working as his apprentice in a factory. “The civil war lasted 40 years,” explains the 46-year-old Haroun. “There are lots of victims that I know, people who’ve lost their parents, men like me who were injured.” The director moved to France to study filmmaking in 1981 after he was shot in the leg by a stray bullet, where he suffered as news of the devastating civil war filtered through to him. “I wanted to put Atim in a situation where he has to decide between revenge and forgiveness,” says Haroun. “The problem with civil war is that those who partake in the war and carry arms, they arrive at a solution about power, but they never resolve the problem of what to do with common criminals who have committed atrocities. I wanted to discuss this - many people are left bewildered at what they see as a complete lack of justice.”
Kaleem Aftab
Daratt, on selected release 27 July 07.
 conversations
Read members' comments.
If you register you can discuss this article with other users. |
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. games  games archive Gaming features and weekly columns from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles