Al-Sadd

History is being made in Khartoum these days. People are taking to the streets, demanding freedom and justice. But ›The Dam‹ first shows us the workers who silently toil away in a secluded brickyard that sits in the shadow of the Merowe Dam. The revolution reaches them in the form of a noisy radio program or shaky vertical videos on a phone display. The film’s carefully conceived images at first convey monotony and calm. Not far from the fabled river, however, the external world soon begins to crumble like a brick. A strange desire gnaws at Maher, one of the workers. He hears voices, has disturbing dreams. Secretly, he goes into the desert alone and builds something out of mud, the nature of which can slowly be guessed but not named. It is said that mud is the material of creation, the origin of life – its end, too. A man prepares his act of radical resistance. (Festival information, Mannheim-Heidelberg 2022)