Dry Season (2006)

Synopsis: The landscape is so barren it looks like everyone has already been killed, but survivors remain from Chad's long years of desert war. Atim (Ali Bacha Barkaļ) is a teenager, son to a man slain in the conflict just before he was born. His grandfather raised him, and now that the boy is fifteen, the... The landscape is so barren it looks like everyone has already been killed, but survivors remain from Chad's long years of desert war. Atim (Ali Bacha Barkaļ) is a teenager, son to a man slain in the conflict just before he was born. His grandfather raised him, and now that the boy is fifteen, the old man has handed him a gun. Atim travels to the capital with the news still ringing in his ears that a post-war amnesty has been granted to the entire nation. He is bent on revenge. Amnesty or not, he will track down his father's murderer and put a bullet in his head. But instead of a cold-hearted killer, Atim finds him a quiet, regal man. Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro) has left killing behind and now bakes baguettes for a living. He even hands out free bread to the neighbourhood children. With characteristic precision, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun sets his characters at a moral standoff. Atim waits for the right moment to kill Nassara, even as Nassara takes on the young man as an apprentice baker. In scenes that shift between hushed tension and stark absurdity, Atim learns how to work dough and fire the oven, yet still practises wielding his weapon. Nassara, whose war wounds have left him speaking through a device he holds to his throat, observes the boy's progress but gives nothing away. Even when Atim begins to seduce Nassara's much younger wife, the older man's response is unexpected. Haroun's Bye,Bye Africa and Abouna established him as one of Africa's most important new directors. With Daratt, his signature style of controlled emotion and distilled narrative reaches a new level of refinement. Haroun's aesthetic is uniquely suited to the parched, war-ravaged landscape of Chad. This is a cinema of subsistence, from a place where life is lived marginally and characters are stripped of all but the most essential. -- © Toronto Film Festival [More]