El Haimoune
Followed by The Dove's Lost Necklace (1991),This simply told story tells of a teacher who is sent to a desert village (or what is left of it)to teach the young people there. He arrives to find the citizens walking around in a dreamlike state. When the teacher asks the local Sheik, he is informed that the village has a curse upon it, where the locals walk off, with the promise of a buried treasure, only to find themselves the unfortunates that are referred to as the wanderers of the desert, who will wander until the end of time in the desert. Add some elements of spirituality & you have yourself a beautifully told tale of casting off the material/superficial world & connecting with the spiritual one. Despite the overall lack of colour, it still manages to capture glints of Persian rugs,shawls,prayer mats, etc. It also manages to add some very Fellini like images from time to time (the boat that turns up outside the village gate). This is story telling at it's best (the film's pacing will put a few off, although the film itself clocks in just over 95 mins,it can seem endless to someone who doesn't possess a long attention span). No MPAA rating here, but nothing to offend anybody (you can probably bring the entire family to this one---provided your family has the above mentioned attention span to deal with the pacing).,