Winner of Best First Film at the Venice Film Festival last year,
this Odyssian tale of inter-generation bonding between a French
teenager Reda (Nicolas Cazale) and his father (Mohamed Majd) as
they make their pilgrimage from France to Mecca is quite deserving
of the accolades it has gathered so far. Apart from the truly magnificant
visage of Cazale — an ethereal hybrid of Aamir Kahn's regality
and Gallic seductiveness — this film also features some truly
beautiful moments of quiet humanity.



Coming home one day, Reda was told that he has been appointed to
ferry his father across Europe and the Middle-Eastern lands to the
holy destination of Mecca. All these familial responsibilities descent
in spite of his imminent final exams. Still, Reda consented, but
now without having his jaws firmly clenched. Thus, the film starts
off with a somewhat tense relationship between father and son which
soon develops into a pretext to exploring the differences between
cultures and the inter-generational rupture in traditions.

In their pilgrimage, the father-son duo will be met with many encounters
with strangers, some of which are funny, some mysterious and baffling,
but always adding a little something to that understanding of what
it means to be human in a world divided by different beliefs, and
yet makes one feel strangely connected to one another at the same
time: Reda, though not necessarily sharing the ferventness of his
father's beliefs, nonetheless honours him with the repect as is
often due to the head of the family.

Though the premise is susceptible to charges of being cliche, the
way in which director Ismael Ferroukhi paces his story is quite
a departure from most road-trip movies before it. Many aspects of
the story have been deliberately left unclear and unresolved. Despite
such flaccidity, the ending does pack a huge emotional wallop which
will no doubt undo the hardest of hearts. Then again, watching gorgeous
Cazale on screen does harden other parts of one's physiognomy. Enjoy...