This is Lotfi Achour's second feature, and I hope he makes many more. Most of Red Path is subjective, seen from the standpoint of an adolescent boy trying to live through an unimaginable trauma and lay its ghost to rest. His family's own attempt at closure is fraught with danger; living at the edge of Jihadi-roamed wilderness, far from the reach (or care) of the state, they're on their own.
The images, rendered by Achour and cinematographer Wojciech Staron, are haunting and poetic, literally elemental in the use of water, lightning, and rock. The film switches from visceral to lyrical as deftly as it shifts between neorealism and magical realism. The landscape--bleak, scrubby plains broken up by occasional imposing mountain; brutal rock formations yielding the precious remnant of a stream--is practically one of the main characters. As for the human ones, the main cast was so good I had no idea who was a trained actor and who might be a gifted amateur. Ali Hleli, as the young lead, is perfect. And so is the film's varied tone. Despite its bleak subject matter, Red Path is too artful to be heavy going.
