Synopsis

And what if Ulysses, on his return from his time travel, had only found undecipherable scribbles, broken pieces, sombre and shifting landscapes, memories scratched like splinters (of his world and his life)? His own room has become hardly recognizable to him, with his television still switched on, the cooker, the window and his wife sleeping. A disturbing disorder has established itself all around in which eyes and ears seem in a constant state of waiting, as if they are prisoners of these fragments of a reality so gripping, obtuse, impossible to avoid and yet lying, fleeing, opaque. The spectator of The White She-Camel might then have a premonition about what it means to be “a stranger in the world”, like solitary weight, but also like tension of discovery, like desire to retrieve his past, like a longing to find a viable place.

— Olivier Smolders

Watch the film

The White She-Camel (La Chamelle blanche) is available to watch on Tënk and Derives.tv.
Watch on Tënk →
Watch on Derives.tv →

Prizes

Prix Scam (Belgian society of filmmakers) – Festival Filmer à tout prix, Brussels, Belgium
Special mention – Festival Visions du Réel, Nyon, Switzerland
Special mention – Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea

Technical data

Director

Xavier Christiaens with Sandrine Blaise

Script

Xavier Christiaens

Photography

Xavier Christiaens

Editing

Xavier Christiaens

Music & songs

Xavier Christiaens

Technical assistance

Michel Dutry, François Petit

English translation

Anoek De Smet and Jim Seger

Production

Ostrov (Belgium), Sandrine Blaise and Xavier Christiaens

Coproduction

Wallonie image production (Belgium), Christine Pireaux

Supported by ‘Brouillon d’un rêve’ - SCAM

Trailer