Film Movement picked up North American rights to Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2013 Cannes Competition entry Grigris, where it won the Vulcan Award for technical achievement. 

The film, which received mixed reviews after its Cannes premiere, centers on Grisgris, a 25 year old young man with dreams of becoming a dancer despite the fact that he’s paralyzed from the waist down. His dreams are shattered when his uncle falls seriously ill. To save him, he decides to go work for petrol traffickers.

It stars Soulémane Démé, Mariam Monory, Cyril Guei, Anaïs Monory and Marius Yelolo (who’s worked with Haroun on at least 2 other past films).

Grisgris is produced by Florence Stern for Pili Films, with Chad’s Goï Goï Productions and Frances 3 Cinéma.

Film Movement is aiming to release the film during the first half of 2014, in a limited opening, which will be followed by a national expansion.

Film Movement also released Haroun’s last film, Un Homme Qui Crie (A Screaming Man), in 2012.

Here’s a new trailer, which looks so unlike any of Haroun’s past films, but which makes me even more curious to see what he’s cooked up here (it’s not subtitled, but it really doesn’t need to be). Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I watch a film that includes scenes with a black man and woman riding a motorcycle together, I immediately remember Djibril Diop Mambéty’s classic work Touki Bouki: