THE INVITATION

L'INVITATION

By Fabrizio MALTESE

ILLMATIC FILM GROUP - as SALES All rights, World

Documentary - Completed 2022

An invitation from Timbuktu director Abderrahmane Sissako to visit and film his homeland, Mauritania, results in an epic yet ultimately intimate journey that retraces the threads of a relationship interrupted all too soon.

Festivals
& Awards

Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2022 2022
Film Forward Competition
Ferrara Film Festival 2022
    • Year of production
    • 2022
    • Genres
    • Documentary
    • Countries
    • LUXEMBOURG
    • Languages
    • FRENCH
    • Duration
    • 79 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Fabrizio MALTESE
    • Writer(s)
    • Fabrizio MALTESE , Stephan ROELANTS
    • Producer(s)
    • Jeanne GEIBEN, Vincent QUÉNAULT
    • Synopsis
    • The desert is calling. Yet, it is with the ocean that Fabrizio Maltese’s journey begins. He has accepted Abderrahmane Sissako’s invitation to set out on a Voyage and continue the film he and Pol Cruchten had initiated together.
      Pol has since passed away. The project he had been dreaming of has thus taken on a new, symbolic dimension. It must see the light of day. This is why Fabrizio has travelled on his own to meet with the Mauritanian director. But fate seems to have decided otherwise.
      From Saint Louis in Senegal to Nouakchott in Mauritania, from Mata Moulana to Chinguetti, Fabrizio allows himself to get lost alone in the desert, with nothing more than a few scribbled notes jotted down on the piece of paper that was given to him by the two filmmakers.
      Through windswept dunes and shaded palm groves, in the shelter of a mud hut or above wetland water lilies, we come to understand that the journey’s guide is not the one we expected. It is alongside Pol’s spirit that we now walk the rocky road.
      Leathery skins and sandy parchments, surprise encounters and missed appointments, the vastness of the desert becomes a mirror in which to discover our unexpected quests and look deeper into ourselves. And Fabrizio’s film, a way to unite the souls of his two travelling companions yet again.