Chad is one of the poorest countries on Earth, perpetually dragged down by corruption and ravaged by civil war, so you wouldn't expect it to have a thriving film industry. And it doesn't, as Mahamat-Saleh Haroun discovers when his mother's death prompts him to return to his native country after a 10-year exile in France learning his craft as a filmmaker. All of the theaters he knew while growing up are shuttered and fallen into ruins. Video has replaced the once-communal experience of moviegoing. A deep-seated prejudice against film as "stealing your image" has taken hold in part of the country, along with an ignorance about the distinction between acting and being, as he learns when he seeks out an actress who played the part of a woman with HIV in one of his films. She has been shunned by her community and family. Yet Haroun persists, trying to make a movie while he's in Chad, only to be thwarted by a lack of funding and an absence of a system of distribution for films. Haroun plays himself in this docudrama, a provocative portrait of not only a country but also the possible dark future for the art of cinema.
