Any cinephile can mention in a flash a myriad of films which thematize the transfiguring power of cinema, whether it is presented as a self-knowledge tool, as a means of direct expression, or a way of escaping a dull or harsh reality. Arturo Dueñas Herrero Dajla’s film, “Dakhla: Cinema and Oblivion” consciously refuses to formulate such a eulogy. At first glance, its premise – a film festival which takes place in the middle of the North-African desert, on a field which hosts a Sahrawi refugee camp - heralds an ode to cinema and to resistance through culture. When in fact the event is rather treated as a parenthesis – a delightful one, indeed, but of no consequences; and even in its context it isn’t art that comes to the forefront, but the territorial and identity-related claims. It’s the two segments which frame this festive moment that are more significant: several almost identical glimpses of life unfolding against a dreary and hostile territory which remained untransformed by the screenings. Nevertheless, the affirmation that cinema is completely helpless in the face of the challenges of existence is nuanced through the close-up of a young girl who watches in fascination the images on the improvised screen, or through the project of a few young women who want to open a beauty salon among the sand dunes – from where else can man learn to nurture great dreams if not from stories and, in particular, from those told by cinema? (Liri Alienor Chapelan)
AUDIO: English, Spanish, Hassānīya
SUBTITLE: Romanian, English
awards and festivals
Goya Awards 2022
Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival 2020