Everything seems tidy at first in Randa Maroufi’s performative reconstruction. Prettily sorted cars queue up, market women tie up their baggage, security officers do press-ups. On the monotonous grey background the scenes appear schematic, like a blueprint where suddenly everything is graphically condensed, though, with the otherwise observant camera drifting disorientedly in the middle. Everyday life at the border between the Spanish exclave of Ceuta and Morocco, which is crossed illegally by all kinds of goods.

André Eckardt

While others are thinking about alternative energy concepts, this remote Moroccan Atlas mountain range has no electricity at all. The life of the clan is ruled by hard work, bitter poverty and a deadly cough. They only get news from the world outside and food supplies when the narrow path to the village is negotiable. There is no street, let alone a school. One day two employees of an energy company turn up and promise to build a power line that will change the villagers’ lives...
Jerôme le Maire follows this adventurous and arduous undertaking over three years: how all the men in the village must pitch in to heave the heavy compressor up the mountain, how the parts are delivered by donkey and the villagers must first apply for identity cards in town before the switches up the mountain can finally be turned on. Because he looks closely, this tragicomic tale gains most of its depth from the conflicts set in motion by the advent of the modern age in the village community. While some illuminate their premises as bright as daylight, others have barely enough for a dim bulb to light their hut.
The first moving images that arrive on the dusty village square via the new television set – a nod to film history – finally serve as messages from a radiant consumer world. One gets an idea where the path out of the Middle Ages is going to lead straightaway.
– Grit Lemke