The Dam

In this Cannes Directors’ Fortnight feature debut, a humble Sudanese brickmaker has a magical side project: a mud golem with revolution on its mind.

It’s 2019 in remote northern Sudan. Maher is a brickmaker who toils beside the massive Merowe Dam holding back the Nile. Every day, though, he steals away to work on his private project: building a giant mud monster. His world seems so far away from the popular protests in Khartoum against dictator Omar al-Bashir and the military coup that ousted him. But when his golem-like creation begins to talk, and to insist on violent dissident action, a dam’s gonna break somewhere – maybe in real life, but certainly within Maher’s soul.

Gorgeously shot and with minimal dialogue, The Dam bathes viewers in the natural sights and sounds of Maher’s life, much as the brickmakers’ bodies become coated with the same material they’re shaping. Building on his short films The Digger and The Disquiet, Paris-based Lebanese conceptual artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri creates an enigmatic but unforgettable allegory for a political awakening that comes from the land itself.

“A visually mesmerising and quietly political first feature.” – The Film Verdict