He can no longer say exactly why he was so fascinated by the two men in the lobby of a Moroccan hotel. They were both wearing suits and each had a small briefcase with them. Nothing out of the ordinary. And yet for Faouzi Bensaïdi it was the starting point for his new film "Déserts", which is now premiering in Cannes in the "Quinzaine des Cinéastes" section.

"Ideas for new stories often start with normal everyday situations and things that I observe. In 'Deserts', I imagined the two men getting into a car from the lobby and driving through the desert. And these two men next to each other in the car - that was already a cinema scene for me that actually made it into the finished film," says Bensaïdi. Over the next two years, the Moroccan-born filmmaker collected further ideas for the story, and the script almost wrote itself in the end. At its core, the film is about friends Mehdi and Hamid, who work for a debt collection company for a pittance. The two drive through the villages of southern Morocco in their old car and one day come across a man handcuffed to the luggage rack of a motorbike - the beginning of an unexpected journey.

The filming in Morocco

It was also a journey for the film crew - because "Déserts" was not just shot in one place, but virtually all over Morocco. The team travelled the length and breadth of the North African country from west to east. The list of locations included Marrakesh, Casablanca and various stretches of desert. The road trip from the film became a road trip for the crew: "We were a bit like Mehdi and Hamid: always on the road in our cars. During the trips, we naturally continued to work on the film and, for example, watched what we had shot the day before in the evenings. As a team, this brought us extremely close together," reveals the Director.

In the end, the team returned with around 25 hours of film material, which Faouzi Bensaïdi spent another year editing: "I knew exactly how everything should look beforehand. But you have to take your time for this work and think everything through carefully," says the filmmaker. By choosing certain camera lenses, "Déserts" is reminiscent of older cinema films that were still shot on film reels. A fitting look for the wide shots that Bensaïdi chose for his drama together with Director of Photography Florian Berutti. A film made for the big screen. "The space around the actors is its own protagonist in every shot. We have no more than three close-ups in the entire film," says Director of Photography Florian Berutti.

The Germany connection

Faouzi Bensaïdi is not only a Director, Script Writer and Editor, but also an actor. Over the past decades, the 56-year-old has appeared in around 15 productions. A fact that benefits him when shooting his own films: "I know what makes actors tick - and I've been working with my ensemble since my first film. This continuity helps a lot when shooting. You know that you can rely on each other and that there is a mutual understanding," says the Director.

Bensaïdi was also able to rely on his German co-producer Nicole Gerhards, who is involved in the drama with her Berlin-based company NiKo Film: "I met French Executive Producer Sophie Penson shortly before the coronavirus pandemic at the German-French RDV, where she pitched the project to me - and then we went straight into financing together," says producer Gerhards. While the shoot took place entirely in Morocco, the colour grading was done at Harvest Digital Agriculture in Hamburg's Speicherstadt warehouse district. "A great team there, we are very happy with the result. The look of the film is now really reminiscent of a cinema film from the old days," says Bensaïdi.

Unlike many other filmmakers, the Directors completed his film before sending it to Cannes. Afterwards, you always regret not having done the best for your film. But now the jury was able to watch exactly the version that the audience was later able to see in Cannes. The audience was thrilled - and we are sure that it will look exactly the same in Hamburg.