Hard Stone (2025)
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
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Niki Kohandel as Isabelle Eberhardt / The daughter of the Cheikh / The singer |
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Othman El Kheloufi as The Master of Sound |
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Carlos Pérez Marín as The spanish explorator |
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Oli Bonzanigo as Kit Moresby |
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Jake Wiener as Port Moresby |
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Ilyass Dabbah as Biker with green cheche |
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Oussama Affani as Biker with brown cheche |
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Lahbib Bellayni as The seller |
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Hassan Ouayour as The voice calling Oussama |
| Directing | Laila Hida | Director |
| Camera | Laila Hida | Camera Operator |
| Crew | Jake Wiener | Technical Advisor |
| Editing | Dimitri Akim Moudar | Editor |
| Sound | Othman El Kheloufi | Sound Designer |
| Camera | Hassan Ouayour | Camera Operator |
| Production | Ahmed Salem Debbah | Location Manager |
| Production | Mohamed Salem Chafai | Producer |
| Crew | Mohamed Salem Chafai | Catering |
| Sound | Christophe Sarlin | Sound Mixer |
| Editing | Deirdre Keough | Color Grading |
| Art | Haitham Haddad | Title Designer |