Dance of Dust

There's scant plot (what little there is concerns the blossoming, unspoken friendship between two child labourers) and even less dialogue in this determinedly poetic semi-documentary account of life in a remote, windswept desert village whose economy and very survival depends on brick making. Instead, the fragmented sequence of vivid, extraordinarily beautiful, sometimes surreal images focuses on a number of repeated leitmotifs - most notably human faces and the elements - to create an impressionistic portrait of hardship, spiritual strength and human solidarity. At first it all seems a little too self-consciously arty, but after a while it does weave a mesmerising spell; indeed, admirers of Vigo's A Propos de Nice, Herzog's Fata Morgana, or the more abstract flights of fancy by Pasolini or Paradjanov will probably succumb to its strange magic.