Artist-turned-director Noaz Deshe’s debut feature about Alias (Hamisi Bazili), an adolescent boy struggling to survive in his native Tanzania, is in some ways the definition of challenging cinema. Scenes where albinos like Alias are slaughtered to harvest their body parts for a lucrative witch-doctor-run trade are harrowing enough, but on top of that the film’s sometimes slow pacing and discursive storytelling will test the patience of even the most curious, arthouse-friendly viewers. Nevertheless, it’s an extraordinary work, half magical-realist fable, half anthropological essay, marbled with moments both of transcendent beauty and dirt-poor grit. The sometimes stylised camerawork by Armin Dierolf and Deshe himself is frequently arresting in itself, while the sound design meshes to startling effect with the score’s rumbling, synth-driven droning. But at the heart of all this artistry lies a touching story of friendship, new love, and recurrent loss, anchored by a bravura performance by lead Bazili, a non-professional actor of immense promise.
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