A young boy and his chair prove inseparable in this leisurely Moroccan drama, set in a poor village in the Atlas Mountains during the month of Ramadan. The year is 1981, and eight-year-old Mehdi (Fouad Labied) is preparing for his first fast. But with a dad in jail, a friend in the morgue, and a teacher's chair to guard, it's hard to keep his mind on holy matters. Slow to the point of inertia and full of obscure subplots, A Thousand Months nonetheless offers a valuable and compelling insight into a dying way of life.
When his father Abdelkrim is jailed for his involvement in a labour strike, Mehdi and his mother (Nezha Rahile) move in with her father-in-law in a dusty mountain hamlet. There Mehdi, who believes his dad is working in France, is given the privileged task of looking after the local schoolmaster's seat, a role that makes him a teacher's pet in the eyes of his ill-disciplined classmates.
The fate of that chair is implicitly tied up with that of the village which contains - in no particular order - a newly appointed 'caid' (mayor), a farmer thought to have murdered his wife, and a teenager whose death in a car crash is viewed as divine punishment for wearing makeup during Ramadan.
"EPISODIC, RAMBLING AND HARD TO FOLLOW"
This is a land of fear and mistrust, where provincial government is inherently corrupt, and a wedding can suddenly become a riot. It's also a world under siege from the west - a Kate Bush song here, a Bruce Lee film there - where the city's distant lights offer a twinkling temptation to take the first cart out of town.
Though episodic, rambling and a little hard to follow, Faouzi Bensaïdi's feature debut offers enough incidental pleasures to help the audience over the cultural and linguistic barrier.
In French and Arabic with English subtitles.
A Thousand Months (Mille Mois) (2004)
