Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
A young girl and an elderly blind man emerge from under the sands of the Iranian desert. They ostensibly were buried by a sandstorm in the night, but for all we know they are born in that moment. They are new growth in the ancient ground of Nacer Khemir’s allegorical odyssey […]
Seattle Times
Reviewed by: Ted Fry
The primal tranquillity of shifting sands across the Iranian and Tunisian desert is no mere backdrop to this hypnotic fable of spiritual wisdom. The silken dunes that cocoon, propel or transform the humans and animals crossing their rippled lines are elemental characters with as much significance as the mystical parable they […]
March/April 2008 (Volume 23, Issue 2)
Rana’s Wedding
Typecast, 86 min., in Arabic w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $24.99
Hany Abu-Assad’s 2002 Rana’s Wedding is one of the finest films to emerge from the still-young genre of Palestinian cinema. Rana is a 17-year-old facing an impossible situation. Her father, who is leaving Arab East Jerusalem for […]
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 […]
26 February 2008 For Immediate Release
From […]
Los Angeles Times
Reviewed by: Sheri Linden
Like strange desert creatures, a little girl and her blind grandfather emerge from storm-shifted sands, dust themselves off and set out on a journey with no map or timetable in “Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul,” a film steeped in Sufi mysticism and as transcendent as that opening sequence. […]
A visual poem of incomparable beauty, this masterpiece from director Nacer Khemir (Wanderers of the Desert) begins with the story of a blind dervish named Bab’Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With […]
There is a Tuareg proverb that says: “There are lands that are full of water for the well-being of the body, and lands that are full of sand for the well-being of the […]
Film Threat
Reviewed by: Phil Hall
Tunisian filmmaker Nacer Khemir spins an exquisite, mystical tone poem of a film with “Bab’Aziz - The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul.”
Bab’Aziz is a blind old man who is traveling by foot across a desert with his granddaughter Ishtar (yes, Ishtar – the kid’s parents were obviously Elaine May fans). They […]
NEW YORK TIMES
Reviewed by Matt Zoller Seitz
The third feature by the Tunisian filmmaker and poet Nacer Khemir is a structurally audacious fairy tale that imparts moral lessons and shows how narratives reflect and shape life.
The movie’s framing story follows the elderly Bab’Aziz (Parviz Shahinkhou) and his young granddaughter (Maryam Hamid) as they travel through the […]
