A Screaming Man by Mahamet Saleh Haroun

Mahamet Saleh Haroun is in Competition for the first time at the Festival de Cannes. His fourth feature film, A Screaming Man, will be screened today at 12:00 and 22:15 in the Grand Théâtre Lumière.
 The Chadian director, who took part in the Atelier de la Cinéfondation in Cannes in 2005 with his film Darrat, tackles themes that are close to his heart, such as the civil war in Chad and the father figure.

The film takes place in present-day Chad, in the context of civil war. Adam, in his sixties, is a life guard at the swimming pool of a luxury hotel in N’Djamena. When the hotel is sold, he has to let his son Abdel take over his job. He is not happy with this situation, which he feels takes away his social standing. At the same time, the government calls on the people to make a “war effort.”
“This is not a film about war, but about the people who are subjected to it, who feel that they have lost control over their own destinies…  I know what this feels like, as a refugee from the civil war in Chad,” Mahamet Saleh Haroun explains. The director has experienced the civil war more than once: first in 1980, when he was seriously wounded, and then again 26 years later when he was filming Daratt in 2006 and Expectations in 2008.  So it is a reality he knows all too well that he depicts in his films.

He is also very interested in father-son relations, and the father figure is recurrent in his films: “The issue of paternal ties is very important to me. How can we ensure that values are passed on from one generation to the next?” Through Adam, the main character in the film, Mahamet Saleh Haroun also wanted to evoke social relations and religious questions. “In our world today, we do not exist except through our social status. When we lose this status, we very nearly lose our social identity. (…) Adam becomes painfully aware that his cry of suffering is only answered by the silence of God.”