Renowned visual artist Ali Cherri makes his debut in feature film with the enigmatic story of Maher, a taciturn Sudanese labourer who works in a brickyard on the banks of the Nile and, every evening, he secretly wanders off into the desert to continue building a mysterious construction made of mud. It’s 2019 and, while the protests staged by Maher’s fellow citizens against the reviled President al-Bashir come to a head, a disturbing monster starts to show signs of life… Cherri, a Parisian of Lebanese origin, follows up his two critically acclaimed shorts, here rounding off a trilogy that he tellingly describes as “geographies of violence”. This mesmerising allegory with its uncompromising political subtext entranced audiences at this year’s festival in Cannes.