The Dam review – Sudan-set drama is evocative but unspecific

The timing of The Dam’s release feels very conspicuous against current events in Sudan, where the film is set. Civil war has broken out in the country in the past month; the war may be a fresh round of pain but it has its origins in long-standing political turmoils that have buffeted the country, something which Ali Cherri’s debut fiction film touches on.

However, the film is not an attempt to explain anything about the war or current events in Sudan, but rather a mercurial, dreamlike journey into one man’s predicament, heavily reminiscent of the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. We follow a group of brickmakers somewhere on the river Nile. The first half of the film withholds close-ups, preventing any obvious audience identification. Instead, Cherri focuses on the environment around them, and the geometric patterns that emerge in this half-natural half-man-made place: bricks laid row-by-row and drying in the heat; the near-perfect curve of a manicured sandbank; the rhythms of LED lights charging phones.

Cherri certainly has a way with evocative and surreal imagery, and The Dam is suffused with captivating moments, but elsewhere there are missteps. The tone may be hazy, but the cinematography goes for this harsh, dry look… and the interplay between the two doesn’t always quite elevate the material.

It’s only a little while after a protagonist emerges, that of Maher (Maher El-Khaid, part of a cast of non-professionals). He seems to exist in a reverie, often sneaking off after work to construct a strange monument made out of mud, which appears to have mystical powers. The radio and TV speaks of the growing revolution in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, which would eventually overthrow the dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019; meanwhile Maher gradually loses touch with reality, disappearing into the night, or lying awake on his back staring at the sky all day.

The monument is, perhaps, meant to signify the things lost in Maher’s life (we see him talk to his wife on the phone at one point, but that’s the only meaningful conversation he has with another human being). Possibly it signifies his grounding in the earth and the land around him, which is his and his people’s. When it disappears, his break from reality is complete. It is, again, a strong image in and of itself, although it is perhaps a bit too symbolistic to have real emotive heft.

The Dam also lacks perhaps a bit of specificity. It’s certainly a widely international co-production, listing as its countries of origin France, Sudan, Lebanon, Germany and Serbia. Its director is Beirut-born and has studied in France, with auteur-provocateur extraordinaire Bertrand Bonello listed as a co-writer. And yes, in a poverty-stricken, politically unstable country like Sudan, the conditions for a secure home-grown film industry are hard to create. But amidst all this, The Dam uses the backdrop of the Sudanese revolution as little more than sensitively-handled window-dressing. The very real hardship the Sudanese are presently going through is, of course, anything but, and I wonder if there’s a far more expansive, politically radical film to be made here. Nevertheless, in its best moments The Dam is confident, evocative film-making.

The Dam is released in UK cinemas on 12 May.