San Francisco Chronicle
Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
A soft, poetic side of the Muslim world is portrayed in “Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul,” a movie as multifaceted and difficult to follow as its labyrinthine title. There’s nothing wrong with being difficult if there’s a payoff at the end. Screenwriter-director Nacer Khemir provides that with a […]
San Francisco Weekly
Reviewed by: Michael Fox
In the shifting sands of the Middle East, the only constants are faith and fables. They coexisted quite happily before the rise of fundamentalism, and they find a soulful commonality in Nacer Khemir’s nostalgia-tinged Bab’Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul. The Tunisian filmmaker has conjured a unique and uniquely […]
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Reviewed by: Jennique Mason
Directed by Nacer Khemir with help from screenwriter Tonino Guerra (L’Avventura [1960], Amarcord [1973]), Bab’Aziz traces the journey of a blind dervish who has taken a vow of poverty and his delightful granddaughter Ishtar. Wandering through the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that happens once […]
Gambit Weekly / bestofneworleans.com
Reviewed by: Will Coviello
Director Nacer Khemir’s Bab’Aziz is a fable not about a (conceptually more Westernized) search for meaning, but a quest to have beauty and love revealed, in the sense that they represent spiritual truths to some Islamic mystics. Bab’Aziz is an old, blind dervish accompanied on his trek into the […]
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 […]
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 […]
Bab’Aziz @ Cinema Village
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 […]
