Daratt

Chad's leading film-maker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun follows the excellent Abouna with this compelling blend of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ordered by his blind grandfather to murder the man who killed his father during the 40-year civil war, teenager Ali Bacha Barkaï tracks Youssouf Djaoro to a backstreet bakery and becomes his apprentice. In time, Barkaï comes to respect the war-scarred Djaoro, as he sees him feeding the city's starving children with free bread, and grows increasingly fond of Djaoro's pregnant wife Aziza Hisseine. Exploiting confused emotions and glowering silences to explore the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation, Haroun captures the grim ironies of a riven society. Also functioning as a seethingly subtle thriller, this consistently forces us to reassess our attitude to the frightened youth fighting a battle that is not really his own, and the lonely warrior left to live with the futility of his crimes.