Event: Vancouver Film Festival

Date: Oct. 12, 2009

Location: Granville 7

I saw many movies during the Vancouver Film Festival, many of them good, some excellent, others not so much. One that really stood out for me was Nomad's Land, a film by Gaël Métroz. Here is a short review by Judy Bloch:

One thinks that one is going to make a journey, yet soon it is the journey that makes or unmakes you,” Nicolas Bouvier (1929–1998) wrote in The Way of the World (L’usage du monde). Steeped in the writings of this Swiss traveler/philosopher—admittedly, in his thrall—filmmaker Gaël Métroz sets out to follow the road Bouvier traveled in 1953 in his iconic Fiat Topolino: from Yugoslavia, through Turkey, to Iran, then Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Whereas Bouvier had Thierry Vernet as a companion, Métroz is alone, at once author and observer, subject and object of his own journey. But time has marched forward (urbanization) and backward (politicized tribal violence, Taliban in the streets), and the East is unrecognizable as the world Bouvier described. So Métroz leaves the Topolino’s path for the hinterlands, trades car for camel, wine for opium, inns for yurts, peripatetic freedom for wheat gathering in deep valleys and sheep herding in mountains locked in snow until spring, philosophical musings for the hard work of “starting my life over.” Befriended by womenfolk he dare not smile at; living alongside the oppressed Kalesh, persecuted for “believing in this world, not the next”; lost in the desert and rescued by “untouchables”—at each turn Métroz finds, “I’d forgotten I wasn’t born here.” So, in spite of himself, he emulates the transformations of Nicolas Bouvier, who said, “If one does not accord the journey the right to destroy us a little bit, one might as well stay at home.”

I couldn't agree more. When I travel I tend to avoid all the obvious places and favour the obscure and the remote. While the protagonist in this film narrowly escapes dying in the desert and travels through some places which could only be described as hellish, such as his encounter with the Taliban, there are many other places which are of such sublime beauty that one could well wonder if they are even on earth. Many scenes reminded me of my visit with the nomadic Kurds who live on the slopes of Mt. Ararat.

Here is a brief trailer for the film.