39th edition 2024 feature films
Between the Calais Jungle, Algeria, which he left at the age of 20 and South Africa, where his brother has now settled, the filmmaker captures faces and stories by the fireside, staving off the fatality of the world’s polarity and reclaiming history. He delivers a poetic ode to the damned of the earth striving to live their lives.
Tarek Sami’s work focuses on exiles, uprooted populations, and North-South relations. His first feature film, Chantier A (co-directed with L. Dèche and K. Loualiche) - a journey across Algeria fashioned into a visual poem - was screened at Entrevues in 2013. It is part of the collective structure L’Argent. The Language of Fire premiered at Visions du Réel.
A word from the selection committee:
La Langue du feu first opens at dusk, as we stagger behind a shadow that suddenly turns to the camera and confesses. First, the movement of the film: in filming situations of exile, it waits for the words to surface, finds the right pace, and allows for each confession to open the door to the next. These are attempts to chronicle living experience (some considered, some yet to come), to explain to the others, to the loved ones who are waiting. Tarek Sami’s second feature film spans the Calais Jungle, Algeria, and South Africa, it does not emphasise borders nor time, and baulks at a polarised cartography of migrations. The accomplishment of La Langue du feu lies in its full embrace of exiles - both their bodies and their voices - in an resolutely nocturnal and impressionistic piece, guided by traumatic dreams and tales. Ignoring the extreme filming conditions, Tarek Sami films by the campfire, as if discovering a landscape at dawn, masterfully capturing movements of life and survival.
― Vincent Poli
- Photographie
- Tarek SAMI
- Son
- Lucie DECHE
- Montage
- Julie BORVON
- Production
- L’Argent
CONTACT :
L’Argent
Tarek SAMI
tareksami18@gmail.com