L'aube du monde

DAWN OF THE WORLD is a visual poem, a tragic tale that takes place in a haunting, almost mythic landscape. The simplicity of the story and the beauty of the images almost make the story seem a misty dream. Brought in pictures of utter elegance, extreme subtlety, it highlights, despite a backdrop of war and death, the noble side of human being: compassion and mercy to the weak, maintenance of integrity amid suffering… although it would not be misleading to place it in the company of the films of Mizoguchi and Satyajit Ray. It has the same generosity , the same kind of compassionate humanism, expressed with equal sensitivity and poetry. I hope one day it will be as well known as it deserves to be.

A robust art film directed with an unquestionable talent, Dawn of the World is a journey through the unexplored Marshlands of Iraq and a moving war film about the tragedy of the Marsh Arabs (everybody knows about the Golf War, but nobody knows about the massacre of the Marsh Arabs!) The story is harrowing and the presentation is graphic. Powerful material, powerfully rendered. The director alternates the horrors of war with occasional fairy tale-like images; together they imbue the film with an unapologetically disturbing quality that persists long after the credits roll. One must not describe the sequence at the end. It must unfold as a surprise. It is unutterably depressing, because history can never undo itself, and is with us forever.

Dostoivski had predicted: "Beauty will save the world !" Writer-director Abbas Fahdel must share the same hope. His "Dawn of the World" is full of beauty… beauty that stands next to horror. Quite original, the film evolves in a special temporality (made of long shots that give the film its particular rhythm) and in a redesigned space stretched between two extremes: that of the infinitely large (the desert, the swamps) and that of the infinitely small (the houses of reeds). Fadhel films the natural environment in the manner of Tarkovsky, plays on the contrast between land and water, between city and nature, and guide us to the heart of a devastated "Zone", formerly known as the ancient biblical Garden of Eden. Unforgettable !

There are many films that deal with the war in Iraq, but "Dawn of the World" is probably the most beautiful and less manichean. Playing cleverly on the contrast between the background (the atrocity of the war) and form (sense of beauty), this post-apocalyptic love story remains quite original. Served by a beautiful photography and a stunning music, it looks like an aquatic poem and may suggest "The Odyssey", the pitfalls and the time it takes to regain his homeland after the war, from the perspective of those (women) who wait - Hafsia Herzi and Hiam Abbass are simply sublimes. The film is also a sensitive work full of poetry, which combines visual splendor and emotion and in which every detail make sense. It still works as well in the second vision, and the emotion remains intact. A true gem to discover urgently.

When it is not biased or superfluous, when it is applied without cheating or posture, the cinematic language proves that movie art is more than necessary : It is essential. Perfectly mastered, Dawn of the World impresses especially by the staggering beauty of the landscape (a kind of original beauty), by the dignity of the gaze on a community scorned and ignored. The film renew our faith in film art and in humanity. interesting thing to note: Dawn of the World seems to have its roots in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, a fascinating story of a boat trip down the Congo River to find a man who had gone native, living amongst the indigenous Africans. In Dawn of the World, the river is the Euphrates and the indigenous people are the Maadaans, the Marsh Arabs.