29th Locarno International Film Festival

Shahid-Saless shares, with a sharp style and convincing way, the loneliness and progressive alienation of a boy who has lost his father.

This first film, built around the Passion of Christ, opposes the courage of a non-conformist and pacifist citizen with the hypocrite, suspicious and aggressive attitudes of a society that prides itself to be well-disposed.

The director induces a participation to some vital problems concerning immigrants. Through a succession of events, at times tragic, depicted with efficient means, he insists on the importance of heartily immigrants welcoming through interpersonal comprehension. He especially stresses the necessity of transforming socio-economic structures.

This film denounces the oppression of poor nations by rich countries and witnesses the difficulties inherent to an authentic liberation. Deeply rooted in the life and in the culture of his country, the director Haile Gerima has been able to translate, in an exemplary narrative style, the distresses and hopes of these men who have known unchanging life conditions since three millennium. Its call has a prophetic accent.