26 February 2008                                                     For Immediate Release

From award-winning film maker Nacer Khemir, the director of Bab’Aziz - The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul. The first film in Nacer Khemir’s Desert Trilogy, available for the first time on DVD!

Khemir’s first film, Les Baliseurs du Désert (Wanderers of the Desert), was awarded Grand Prix of the Festival des Trois Continents in 1984, and was followed by Le Collier Perdu de la Colombe (The Dove’s Lost Necklace), which won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno in 1991. Wanderers of the Desert and The Dove’s Lost Necklace are parts one and two, respectively, of the Desert Trilogy of which Bab’Aziz is the final film.

Coming to DVD March 25, 2008.

Wanderers of the Desert
1984 | Drama | 95 minutes | Tunisia

Directed By: Nacer Khemir Audio: Arabic | Subtitles: English

The first feature in Nacer Khemir’s visually stunning Desert Trilogy.

A traveling writer and teller of fables, Nacer Khemir here applies his age-old skills to a narrative feature film, the first in his highly-regarded Desert Trilogy that includes The Dove’s Lost Necklace and Bab’Aziz - The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul. Khemir creates an exotic world with Wanderers Of The Desert, when a young teacher arrives to take over a village school isolated in the shimmering desert. Reminiscent of the best Iranian films of the 1970s in its use of color and setting, it also has something of the wit, cruelty and ambiguity of the Arabian Nights. Legendary figures materialize out of wells and the desert itself, groups of children hurry through a labyrinth of underground corridors, the teacher is whisked away to a mysterious rendezvous and never returns. Nothing is really explained; Khemir merely shows how legend, tradition and fate hang heavily over this community and he does so with a richly expressive visual style aided by superb use of color. Especially notable is the way the protagonists are always placed against sun-scorched landscapes in which nothing is quite what it seems, like the marvelous moment when everyone gathers round a ship that has mysteriously washed up in the desert sand.