On Daratt
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, the director of Daratt, was born in N'Djamena, the capitol of Chad. His first exposure to films was at an open theater in Abeche, where he watched Westerns and Bollywood features. While these movies inspired him to become a filmmaker, he was not interested in replicating what he saw on screen. In discussing Daratt in the interview that follows its broadcast on Cinemondo, Mahamat admits the influence of Westerns but, as he says: “my hero is Chadian, he is not a Hollywood hero…He is a hero because he does not kill and not a hero because he kills."
Today, Mahamat-Saleh makes films to counter the ‘colonisation by images’ he claims is rampant in Africa. He works under almost impossible conditions, with non-professional actors and no local facilities to process the 35mm film he uses. Just as the production for Daratt was beginning, the civil war in Chad erupted again after a cease-fire. Mahamat and his crew kept on against great odds, all because he's determined to give to the Chadian people the kind of film he believes they deserve. In an intimate portrayal of a boy orphaned by the man he seeks to kill, Mahamat shows how refraining from revenge is an “act of violence against oneself” - but one that ensures the possibility to “envision another future.”
If you like Daratt you might want to check out Mahamat-Saleh's two previous features, Bye Bye Africa (1999) and Abouna (2002). Let us know what you think of Daratt by joining the Cinemondo discussion board. And tune in to Cinemondo next week for the U.S. TV premiere of Bahman Ghobadi's A Time for Drunken Horses, the first Kurdish-language movie and the winner of the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Link TV is proud to be presenting Daratt. Please join our discussion board and tell us what you think of the film, and what else you'd like to see on Cinemondo.
