Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun sets his latest film, “Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars,” in the Ennedi desert of his native country. Following Kellou, a young woman who sees distressing visions of the past and future, the film is both a mystical parable and a metaphor-heavy narrative. While the story takes place in contemporary times, some of the characters have extraordinary gifts and tell tall tales of a world beyond the realm of most people. The journey it takes the audience on, however, is only intermittently entertaining. It has moments of beauty and even poetry, but too many others of tedium.
Maïmouna Miawana plays Kellou with an open-hearted and gentle determination that suits this character who thinks of herself as an outcast. In her tiny village she’s called a “blood girl,” because her mother died while giving birth to her. Her father Gabra (Ériq Ebouaney) is a stranger who moved to the village before she was born, yet has never been fully accepted in this community. When Kellou starts having haunting visions that foretell the future, she feels scared.
The bright spot in her life is the love of Baba (Christ Assidjim Mbaihornom), a teenage villager whose family doesn’t approve of the courtship. Kellou becomes even more isolated when she befriends Aya (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), an older woman and fellow outcast. Yet Aya opens a new world for Kellou,