Dry Season

Colour, 35 mm
France, Belgium, Chad, Austria, 2006, 95 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

In November and December of 2006 the New Crowned Hope Festival was held in Vienna as part of the celebrations honouring Mozart’s Year. Seven films were made for the occasion by directors who do not come from “Western” culture. One of them, Chad-born Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, contributed with the film Dry Season, which, like Mozart’s opera La clemenza di Tito deals with the theme of the need for forgiveness and reconciliation. After the end of the four-year civil war in Chad, all war criminals were given amnesty, including Nassara, now a modest baker. It is he who 16-year-old Atim is looking for to avenge the death of his father. Atim has Nassara take him on as an apprentice and patiently waits for the right moment. The course of everyday events however begins to grind away at the tense emotions. Haroun’s frank, sometimes even raw, direction shifts the initial drama without haste to a grand finale confronting Atim with a fundamental decision.

About the director

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (b. 1960, Chad) studied film in Paris and journalism in Bordeaux. For five years he wrote for the local newspapers La Nouvelle République and Sud-Ouest and worked as a program director for an independent radio station. In 1994 he returned to film and made his first short, Maral Tanié. Five years later, Haroun completed his first feature film, Bye Bye Africa, which was declared the best debut at the Venice Festival. In 2003 the KVIFF screened another of his films, Abouna, which premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. His latest film Dry Season had its premiere in competition at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Prize in addition to four non-statutory awards.