"Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars" (Berlinale Review): Haroun's Mythic Return to Chad

There is a moment in the press conference for "Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars," when director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun is asked whether certain burial rituals depicted in his film correspond to actual practice in Chad. He corrects the questioner firmly: this is not an ethnographic document. It is a fiction, rooted in philosophy and belief, but not beholden to anthropological accuracy. That defense matters, because the film invites exactly that kind of scrutiny — it is set in a specific place, draws on specific traditions, and asks its audience to take its cosmology seriously.

I've watched all of Haroun's work, produced over more than two decades, from "Abouna" to "Lingui, The Sacred Bonds," and long admired the seriousness with which he returns to his native Chad as both subject and site. "Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars" feels recognizably his — austere, patient, delivered with clear conviction — and yet it also leaves me uncertain about how much new ground that commitment covers here.