Crossing the Dust

Dear readers,

I had the chance today of watching the movie Crossing the Dust, at the Rotterdam Film Festival. I strongly recommand it. The movie is borrowing subtly to both the war movie as well as the road movie genres. The Kurd producer and author, Shawkat Amin Korki, made a sensitive picture of the day of the fall of Saddam Hussein, through the eyes of two Peshmerga soldiers, on a food supplying mission, who meet a small crying Arabic boy on their road. One, remembering his own brother, pities the boy and tries to help him, while the other first refuses to intervene. Unfortunately, the boy's name is Saddam...

The movie is full of tenderness, humour and melancholy, but action and events maintain a very good rythm. The most awful aspects of war and of the (falling) regime of Saddam Hussein are of course present, but the tone remains quite light, to a certain point. There is a great poetry in the images as well as the dialogues. Unfortunately, the subtitles in English were of poor quality, but this does not break the atmosphere the least, so it remains acceptable. All actors play extremely well, and one should notice the excellent performance of the boy, played by Abdola Awayd. Everything basically sounds right, from the "blindness" of the American soldiers to the hypocrisy of the local imam. The film also avoids any propagandist effects and concentrates happily on the human story.

All in all, I enjoyed an excellent movie, and a compelling and very moving story. Both things I hadn't watch in a rather long time.