Mimosas

Director: Oliver Laxe

2016 / 96min / DCP

Described by its director as a “religious Western,” Laxe’s beguiling Mimosas—divided into three sections, each named for a prayer position in the Islamic rak’a—follows a young man (Shakib Ben Omar) who is charged with leading a dying sheikh and his caravan across the Moroccan desert and the narrow, winding paths that lead through the Atlas Mountains en route to the ancient city of Sijilmasa. His journey, which appears at various points to be occurring in the present-day and at an unidentified point in the distant past, passes through landscapes majestic in their lunar desolation. A cryptic, open-ended parable, breathtaking in its barren beauty and abundant with prospective interpretations—and also in many regards a precursor to the director’s Sirāt, with Laxe’s chance encounter with a rave taking place in a Moroccan pine grove during the Mimosas shoot providing inspiration for his latest film.

Distributor: Grasshopper Film