Hard Stone

Story

Synopsis

In Sange Khara, commissioned by Fundação Bienal de São Paulo for the 36th Bienal, Laila Hida offers a landscape where memory is not narrated, but circled – tentatively, tenderly, with the gravity of something sacred and half-forgotten. The project stages a kind of poetic inquiry where images seem to emerge from a re-constructed memory anchored by a 16mm film and expanded through an immersive installation. Characters cross paths, brought together through a tapestry of iconographic and cinematic references: the young woman from The Wanderers of the Desert (1984), the couple in The Sheltering Sky (1990). Two young guys ride their bikes and strike poses on a dirt road as if freshly cast in a rap video summoning an apparition, a construct of a landscape, the desert, the oasis, and the people who inhabit them, filtered through cinema and image.

Director

Laila Hida

Language

Arabic

Country

Brazil, France, Morocco

Release date

6 September 2025

Ensemble

Cast

• Niki Kohandel

  Isabelle Eberhardt / The daughter of the Cheikh / The singer

• Othman El Kheloufi

  The Master of Sound

• Carlos Pérez Marín

  The spanish explorator

• Oli Bonzanigo

  Kit Moresby

• Jake Wiener

  Port Moresby

• Ilyass Dabbah

  Biker with green cheche

• Oussama Affani

  Biker with brown cheche

• Lahbib Bellayni

  The seller

• Hassan Ouayour

  The voice calling Oussama