The film opens with a sand storm. The image is not at all fortuitous as nothing is entirely transparent in this film that passes no judgments and offers no certitudes or solutions. On the contrary, it lies in the intermediate zone of perception, in the place of sensitivity and listening. Nouadhibou is a little fishing town on the Mauritanian coast. Abdallah is about to go to Europe and has come to see his mother. He doesn’t understand Hassanya, the local language, but tries to understand the things around him. This very set-up is moving in itself, and it is here, in its poised gaze that captures the details, always ready to learn, that the film truly becomes cinema. A young girl learns to sing, a young lad is an apprentice electrician. The film is riddled with song and light, the uncertain voice of the girl rehearsing, the light bulbs that do or don’t light up, a passionate quest for expression and light, both terms of course being linked and intertwined in the film. « I’m putting in a light, but do they really need it? » wonders Maata, the old electrician. Khatra, the child apprentice, is convinced so. When he is asked what he wants to be later on, he replies after a moment’s careful thought, « electrician ». The light will not be the imported images dished out on the television. The anachronism of a French game show in the local surroundings suffices to suggest the ardent need for African images. But the elsewhere is present, especially in people’s minds. Abdallah hasn’t left yet, but he is already in internal exile. Makan would like to leave too, and his friend Raphaël returns, spat back out onto the beach by the waves. We will never know whether or not he managed to get to Spain from Tangiers. His corpse itself evokes the tragedy of all those who don’t have the freedom to move, the abyss that divides the world in two. « Death is in the natural order of things », says Maata. It is part of life, accepted. Like Makan when he sees Raphaël, you don’t go near it because it is already there, interwoven into life, like a hidden meaning. This restraint is characteristic of the whole film. A glance suffices to establish communication, with the spectator too. The emotion is present, permanent, in the subtlety of the approach. When the young Khatra unscrews Maata’s light bulb to take it to the sea, just like the child in Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen (The Light) who unearths the egg of knowledge before taking it to mankind, a perfectly convincing poetry is set up. The light bulb will come back to him. He needs light and he will transmit it. Leaving is not necessarily the solution. It is perhaps more this vision, this openness to others, this sensitivity, this sensuality, even, that this bit of evocative dune conveys. It is the last image in this superb film, a lasting gift that the spectator will treasure forever.
