movie review the unknown saint

'The Unknown Saint' Review: A Searing Dark Comedy That Recalls The Best Of The Coen Brothers [Cannes]

Getting the tone right of a black comedy is excruciatingly hard. Go off too far in one direction and it becomes a maudlin mess, too far the other and it feels churlish or mean, making light of a serious situation rather than maintaining that delicate balance that's satiric rather than scornful. Add religion and faith into the mix and you've got pitfalls deep enough to fell even masters of the form. The fact that a first time filmmaker, Alaa Eddine Aljem, manages such a magic trick with his debut The Unknown Saint is thus all the more reason to worship this gem of a film. Aljem's story borrows the quiet surrealism of the Coen Brothers to tell the tale of a thief (Younes Bouab) who climbs a hill to bury some loot beside a gnarled tree. Thinking quickly, the thief masks the digging as a burial complete with a roughly hewn rock for a headstone. Arrested by the police but with the lucre safely ensconced, he does his short prison term and returns to reclaim his bounty, finding there's a small, white-walled building at the site, covering what's purported by locals to be the resting place of an unknown saint whose very presence grants miracles. From here Aljem's film gently but persuasively pokes fun at the trappings of religion and the foibles of humanity while simultaneously illustrating the true power of resilience and faith from those unswayed by the more showy aspects of local custom. In the small town that's grown up around the shrine there are barbers and religious figures, hoteliers, German shepherd dogs and bored women looking to doctor's visits in order to waste some time, each in their own way influenced by the appearance and attributions of this shrine. Throughout this well drawn slice of small town life is contrasted with the regular struggles of those from an area not far away that have not abandoned their old location in favour of the promise of miracle, eking out what seems a futile mission of tilling land parched by drought while praying for rain. It's this contrast between those looking for a quick fix versus those more quietly committed that gives the film its most acerbic bite. Throughout there are farcical moments where the thief and his colleague see their plans thwarted again and again, succumbing in their own way to the lure of the myth that they know fundamentally is built upon a falsehood. Beautifully shot in the desert of Morocco, Aljem's camera often lingers with great circumspection, allowing the scene to play out and the humans to get into trouble without the need for cinematic histrionics. Rather than coming across as stagey or dull, the precision of composition is welcome, especially from a debut film where often the desire is to throw everything at the screen all at once. The performances of the ensemble are terrific, each providing a kind of world weariness that's captivating. The secular cares of the thief are contrasted both by the histrionics of those looking for a quick miracle and a farmer who patiently and against all odds wishes for the waters to fall from heaven. There's some pretty daring humour throughout – a joke about black-wearing Shiite lands particularly well – teasing not religion and custom in and of itself but the distortion of these entirely human frailties contrasted to a more "pure" and quiet connection between our existence and the forces, often chaotic and arbitrary, that shape it. A smart producer would snag up rights to this film, as its universality of message is by no means localized to its North African roots. That said, there's enough wonderful local texture and sun-drenched actuality that it speaks wonderfully to its Moroccan origins. Too often films from the region are more staid about such matters, but the film's bold sardonicism shatters stereotypical notions of what can be crafted in the area that has too often seen such daring ideas muted. The allusion to the Coens goes deeper than its tragicomic surface may suggest. Look to the criminally underloved A Serious Man for a similar balance between faith and fate, No Country For Old Men for the travails of buried treasure, or even the barber of The Man Who Wasn't There and the desert-based lunacy of Raising Arizona for further evidence of the Coenesque DNA embedded in The Unknown Saint . That's not to say that Aljem's work is heavy handedly referential, simply the warm recognition that a tale that feels entirely endemic to its environment nonetheless speaks to these universal notions of absurdity and angst. A blistering debut by an international filmmaker to watch, Aljem's movie terrific belies all expectations, crafting a supremely entertaining and visually compelling film. For a debut to be this assured, and for a script to so deftly dance around the obvious challenges and result in a film that's delightfully, darkly comedic, The Unknown Saint shows that despite all the obvious ways in which this work could have gone horribly, risibly wrong in these rare cases miracles can come true. /Film Rating: 9 out of 10

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The Unknown Saint Reviews

Its charms are "slight" above all else...But anybody still "looking for comedy in the Muslim world" can be encouraged by this offbeat and off-the-beaten-path charmer.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 24, 2021

This is the rarest of beasts: a smart, side-splitting Arab comedy tackling collective faith, the presiding craving for a saviour and the primal necessity of finding meaning, or rather conjuring up one.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2021

The Unknown Saint, a droll and quirky satire on religious superstitions. Writer-director Alaa Eddine Aljem impresses with a film that is both suspenseful and hilarious.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 8, 2021

The Unknown Saint is a film that really enjoys itself; it strips down to basics but finds room for plenty of wry observational humour, moments of warmth and a dash of contemplation.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2019

A darkly comedic parable about a man whose plans are thwarted at every step.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2019

Alongside his writing, Alaa Eddine Aljemis shows an incredible aptness for visual humour, mirroring the minimalistic Moroccan landscapes, within the rudimentary nature of his characters and the small world in which they inhabit.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2019

Aljem's approach leaves room for the comedy to be created by the situation, rather than forced into the form of a punch line or a gag.

Full Review | May 21, 2019

The young filmmaker Eddine Aljem relies on humor and a narrative humble as that of any saint, to build a moderate story whose relevance will probably not be heavy, but worthy of a modest prayer of thanks. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 20, 2019

The situation is ripe with ridiculousness, but Aljem shows a lot of restraint. His scenes are shot in a spare way, with minimal clutter and he's happy to wait for a joke to pay off.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 16, 2019

Though ostensibly a drama, The Unknown Saint has a droll, whimsical sense of humor about it.

A droll, entertaining, absurdist fable about spirituality and greed that signals an important new talent.

Full Review | May 16, 2019

A blistering debut by an international filmmaker to watch, Aljem's movie terrific belies all expectations, crafting a supremely entertaining and visually compelling film.

Full Review | Original Score: A | May 15, 2019

At turns amusing and compelling, The Unknown Saint's subtexts eventually lose the novel absurdity established in Aljem's narrative, bringing the film to a somewhat ambivalent and convenient finale.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 15, 2019

With its arid humour and sparse simplicity, this amusing first feature is filmmaking which works in near perfect harmony with its backdrop: the baked bones of desert country in Morocco's South.

Full Review | May 15, 2019

[A] slight but nonetheless pleasurable story...

Film Festivals , Films

The Unknown Saint: Film Review

Nils Gollersrud
April 12, 2021

The Unknown Saint crafts a sparse yet cleverly absurd tale of greed, faith, and misfortune as an unlucky thief attempts to recover his loot from a holy site.

A beat-up green car staggers down an empty desert road and its driver, a hapless thief (Younes Bouab) anxiously exits as he spots a hill nearby. Grabbing a shovel and his stolen goods—a bag of cash, he runs to the top of the hill and buries the loot, covering it with rocks as an unmarked grave. Hearing approaching sirens, he tosses the shovel away and returns to the car, surrendering to the police. He’s quickly arrested, but the money is still hidden —and his to retrieve as soon as he’s released from prison.

After his release from prison a couple years later, the thief returns to the hill to grab the money. But instead of an inconspicuous hill in the desert he finds more than he expected—a small building with a sign reading “Mausoleum of the Unknown Saint” and visiting pilgrims praying at the site. Journeying into a nearby town, he spends the night at the “Hostel of the Unknown Saint” and learns that the unmarked grave he originally made was discovered on top of the hill and is believed to be a holy site with healing properties. He’s soon faced with more obstacles, including a guard (Abdelghani Kitab) and his dog, as well as other thieves trying to steal coins from the fountain at the site. The thief then recruits his former accomplice (Salah Ben Saleh), a criminal known as “the Brain” (a sarcastic prison nickname, unbeknownst to him), but their simple plan soon faces more complications. Will the thief be able to retrieve his stolen money or will this eccentric town thwart his criminal plans?

loud and clear reviews The Unknown Saint

The feature debut of writer-director Alaa Eddine Aljem, The Unknown Saint ( Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu ) is much more complex than its modest premise lets on. On the surface it’s a story of criminal misfortune, but at its core it’s a story of faith and how each of its eccentric characters find meaning in their lives . The devoted mausoleum guard will stop at nothing to protect the mausoleum and his valuable guard dog. Hassan (Bouchaib Semmak) desperately wants to leave his humble desert life, while his father Brahim (Mohammed Nouaimane) is convinced that if he continues his prayers, rain will return to the land afflicted by drought. A doctor (Anas El Baz) arrives at the village, only to find a nurse (Hassan Ben Bdida) who prescribes all their patients with the same pills, and out of boredom, decide to play tricks on pilgrims to convince them of the divine powers of the “unknown saint.” “The Brain” casually floats ideas to the thief about murdering the guard or starting a fire in the village so they can steal the money, but draws the line at destroying a supposedly holy site.

Running 100 minutes, The Unknown Saint can’t always sustain itself and it doesn’t always hold your attention. It often feels repetitive and drags especially in the middle, and perhaps a shorter runtime or more contained screenplay would have kept this a more engaging watch. Regardless, it’s an admirable debut from Aljem, as he showcases a careful yet sly sense of humor as dry as its desert setting, injecting his characters with quietly amusing personalities, moral ambiguity, and hidden motives. Expansive wide shots of the desert, meticulously framed to establish a sense of scale, create a genuine sense of place and invite us inside a world of thievery, quackery, and the elusive search for something to believe in —money, an “unknown saint,” or whatever that may be.

The Unknown Saint premiered at the 47th Seattle International Film Festival on April 8-18, 2021 .

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The Unknown Saint first look: a lean, timeless desert caper

Alaa Eddine Aljem’s deadpan debut plants an empty shrine over loot buried in the sands of southern Morocco, and watches a community of sun-beaten oddballs pay reverence.

John Bleasdale Updated: 23 May 2019

Web exclusive

Younes Bouab as The Thief and Salah Bensalah as Ahmed the Brain in The Unknown Saint (Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu)

Faith and place are the themes of Moroccan screenwriter and director Alaa Eddine Aljem’s accomplished and entertaining debut feature. Boasting a neat setup that could easily have graced a Coen Brothers movie or – going back further – a classic Ealing comedy, it tells the tale of a tousle-haired thief (Younes Bouab) who, pursued by the police and his car on its last gasp, must find somewhere to hide his loot. The landscape around him is the baked anonymity of southern Morocco, all sand and stone. Climbing a nearby hill, the thief digs a hole, buries the money and fashions it to look like a grave. Released from prison some years later, he returns to retrieve his ill-gotten gains, only to find a shrine dedicated to an ‘unknown saint’ has been built over the grave.

Morocco/France/Qatar 2019 1hr 40mins

Director Alaa Eddine Aljem

Cast The Thief Younes Bouab The Brain Salah Bensalah Hassan Bouchaib Essamak Brahim Mohammed Naimane Kamal Anas El Baz The Nurse Hassan Ben Bdida The Guard Abdelghani Kitab The Hairdresser/Dentist Ahmed Yarziz

[1.85 : 1] In Arabic (Darija)

From this premise, the film broadens its scope to the small village, eroded by boredom and the desert, but relieved – for some – by the pride and money the shrine generates. A farmer (Mohamed Naimane) torments his son waiting for rains that will never fall. A new doctor ( Anas El Baz ) has his initial enthusiasm worn down by the fact his patients only come to him for entertainment, preferring the shrine’s healing properties for their ills. The holy place also offers employment to a night watchman and his trusted dog. This last obstacle forces the thief to call in help from Ahmed the Brain ( Salah Bensalah ), a man so dense he’s only just realised his prison nickname was meant sarcastically.

Having workshopped his script in Sundance and received notes from the likes of Woody Allen collaborator Douglas McGrath , Aljem has crafted a lean, well-honed comedy with some very funny moments. The deadpan Keatonesque humour mixes with farce as the thieves are hampered on successive nights by vandals, religious festivals and their own creeping disquiet at disturbing a grave, even though they know it doesn’t hold any holy remains. Great use is made of the physical attributes of the cast of locals and professional actors, with Ahmed Yarziz, as the dentist/barber, a particular treat. He reserves his special shaving foam for revered customers and even, in one surprisingly touching scene, branches out into dog dentistry.

Cinematographer Amine Berrada makes the most of his locations, finding variety and beauty in the apparent wasteland and keeping a sober placid eye on the proceedings. Likewise editor Lilian Corbeille allows space for the jokes to land – she also cut French comedy Les Combattents in 2014 – and the pained reactions to sink in, while still keeping the strands of the narrative moving forward at a nice rhythm.

Somewhere between a fable and a shaggy dog story, the film – like some of the villagers – feels both the push and the pull of the shrine. Faith is at once ridiculed and promoted; something that damages the community and helps preserve it. In preserving this ambivalence the young director has not only produced an impressive calling card but a fresh and entertaining caper in its own right.

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> The Unknown Saint (2019) Film Review

The unknown saint.

Reviewed by: Amber Wilkinson

The humour in Alaa Eddine Aljem's debut feature is as bone dry as the landscape that provides the backdrop for the action and continually makes its presence felt. And it's here that we first meet the Amine (referred to simply as The Thief in the credits and played by Younes Bouab), driving frantically into the middle of nowhere on the run from the police. After finding a tree on a hill - the only apparent landmark in an otherwise barren spot - and burying his loot in the nick of time, he marks it like a grave, just as the cops arrive.

A quick cut to the end of his sentence and Amine is keen to retrieve his stash, when he arrives at the place, however, he finds not the isolated spot that he remembers but a prettily painted mausoleum to an "Unknown Saint", which has also led to a nearby village springing up to service passing pilgrims. With worshippers coming to take the waters by day and a guard (Abdelghani Kitab) and his dog patrolling at night, getting the swag back looks increasingly difficult and results in Amine and his accomplice The Brain (Salah Bensalah) taking lodgings in the village, which comes fully equipped with additional absurd characters.

Among them is a newly arrived doctor (Anas El Baz), who soon realises his surgery is only a "hangout place" for ladies, who if they are really ill would rather put their faith in that saint on the hill, and his male nurse (Hassan Ben Bdida), who staves off the boredom with rubbing alcohol and weed in between handing out the same yellow packs of tablets to all-comers. Offering a touch of added pathos are Hassan (Bouchaib Essamak) and his father Brahim (Mohamed Naimane), the younger man trying to get the older one to move but facing an uphill struggle in the face of his dad's faith that rain will come - despite the fact there hasn't been any for 10 years.

The situation is ripe with ridiculousness, but Aljem shows a lot of restraint. His scenes are shot in a spare way, with minimal clutter and he's happy to wait for a joke to pay off. The satire is light and aimed at people rather than religion, pointing out the absurd way in which faith and superstitions can be quickly adopted in such a wholehearted manner it's hard not to be drawn into it even if you think it's hokum. There is some predictability here - and, indeed, knowing where certain things are going ahead of time is a deliberate part of the fun - but Aljem keeps his powder dry on a few suprises.

The writer/director spent time developing the script at the Sundance labs and the film could easily slot in with that festival's American regulars, although it features a refreshing mix of universal and more regional, but understandable, gags - such as when the doctor asks his nurse: "Why are you wearing black?" only to receive the answer: "I'm Shiite". The spare scoring from Amine Bouhafa also has a whisper of the Old West about it, perfectly matching the dusty backdrop.

The film plays out like a modern-day fable, focused on the follies of men and the laws of unintended consequences, and its generosity to its characters, however dimwitted they may be, makes a welcome change from the more acidly cynical tone films like this often adopt.

Director: Alaa Eddine Aljem

Writer: Alaa Eddine Aljem

Starring: Younes Bouab, Salah Ben Saleh, Bouchaib Semmak, Mohammed Nouaimane, Anas El Baz, Abdelghani Kitab, Hassan Ben Badida, Ahmed Yarziz, Younes Bouab, Salah Ben Saleh, Bouchaib Semmak, Mohammed Nouaimane, Anas El Baz, Abdelghani Kitab, Hassan Ben Badida

Runtime: 100 minutes

Country: Morocco, France, Qatar, Germany, Lebanon

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‘The Unknown Saint’ review: Thieves and miracles in droll Moroccan comedy

Alla edine-aljem’s 2019 film is out on netflix..

A thief on the run hides his stash on a hillock with a distinctive tree minutes before being nabbed. Upon his release from prison, the thief returns to the spot to find that it has become a mausoleum dedicated to an “unknown saint”.

A minor economy has sprung up around the shrine, which delays the thief’s repeated attempts to retrieve the booty. As he impatiently waits, director Alla Edine-Aljem rolls out a series of sub-plots and character sketches.

An elderly farmer in a neighbouring drought-struck village is refusing to relocate despite his son’s pleadings. The village where the mausoleum is located has a barber who doubles up as a dentist, an enthusiastic security guard who dotes on his German shepherd, and a movie star-handsome new doctor who becomes the latest pastime of the local elderly women.

The Moroccan comedy, which was premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2019, is out on Netflix. At times recalling Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s films in its use of laconic characters, droll humour and frontal camerawork, The Unknown Saint is an entertaining and whimsical look at worldly desires and miracles wrought by humans.

The barebones nature of the plot complements the stark locations, which are beautifully lensed by Amine Berrada. The series of vignettes is at its strongest when it comes to the doctor (like the thief and his accomplice, this village heartthrob goes unnamed.) Aided by his eccentric male nurse, the doctor learns to make the best of his absurd situation.

Anas El Baz, as the doctor, is among the actors who get the laughs through deft underplaying. He is ably backed by Hassan Ben Bdida, the nurse who has been around for far too long and has a time-tested solution for the unending lassitude. Younes Bouab, as the grim thief, and Salah Ben Saleh, as his over-zealous partner in crime, are among the standouts in the cast.

The Unknown Saint
Alla Edine-Aljem
Younes Bouab

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Alaa Eddine Aljem The Unknown Saint Review

A desperate man ( Younes Bouab ) in the middle of the desert scrambles to bury a bag of money atop a desolate hilltop in the guise of an unmarked grave. Fast forward several years and Amine, fresh out of serving a prison sentence for his crime, returns to find a mausoleum has been built atop his hiding place, named for an unknown saint the locals believe was buried there. At the foot of the hill, a new community has popped up to house the tourists who arrive to visit the mausoleum, their subsistence dependent upon the business derived from the saint’s shrine. Immediately Amine begins to devise a plan to reclaim his money, arriving in the quiet community at the same time as a new doctor.

In several ways, The Unknown Saint is reminiscent of the Coen Bros., particularly the seminal Fargo (1996), which similarly features a kinda funny looking criminal who must backtrack to the hinterland hiding place he was forced to bury his stolen goods in while avoiding authorities. Younes Bouab’s (of Herzog’s Queen of the Desert , 2015) countenance is apparently cause for alarm, classified upon his arrival as someone who’s either crazy or a scientist. Amine chooses the latter role as his front, studying the rocks and sand of the area while he cases the joint. Of course, breaking into the mausoleum is easier said than done, and a watchman’s guard dog leads to a failed assassination attempt on the canine from Amine’s cohort, the sardonically nicknamed The Brain (Salah Ben Saleh).

Like the other characters, Amine the Thief is defined by his archetype, just like the bored, newly arrived doctor (Anas El Baz), on hand simply to placate the women of the community who need a place to hang out six days a week. Same for the ‘heroic’ guard (Abdelghani Kitab), a severely serious overachiever who seems to care more for his dog’s well-being than his son’s.

As absurd as Amine’s situation may be, the correlating tangential storylines of The Unknown Saint are also defined by levity-inducing details (such as the doctor watching snails have sex on a nature program set to opera or the guard’s insistence his dog’s knocked out teeth be replaced by gold, no matter the cost). On a more serious front is the tension between another father-and-son duo, Hassan and Brahim (Bouchaib Essamak; Mohamed Naimane), the latter desperate to leave the desolate region (the failure of which is blamed on the lack of rain and an arid, uninhabitable climate) and the former defining such a move to be an abandonment of their culture (and curses the presence of the unknown saint and the worshippers who moved to be nearer the mausoleum).

At turns amusing and compelling, The Unknown Saint ’s subtexts eventually lose the novel absurdity established in Aljem’s narrative, bringing the film to a somewhat ambivalent and convenient finale. Its characters, defined by their roles and relationships to an imaginary saint generated by a criminal act, are left more-or-less in the same realm. While fortune favors the bold, Aljem’s finale isn’t so much surprising as it is fitting, and allowing for the creation of a more agreeable homage to a more deserving patron.

Reviewed on May 15th at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival – Critics’ Week, 100 Minutes

2019 Cannes Film Festival
Alaa Eddine Aljem
Alexa Rivero
Amine Berrada
Anas El Baz
Bouchaib Essamak
Cannes Film Festival
Cinema of Morocco
Foreign Film Review
Francesca Duca
Hassan Ben Bdida
Mohamed Naimane
Moroccan Cinema
Salah Bensalah
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World Cinema review
Younes Bouab

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The Unknown Saint (2019)

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The Unknown Saint: Robbers, riches and religion make for fresh film debut

Alaa Eddine Aljem’s debut feature The Unknown Saint has come out out of nowhere to inject Arab cinema with a breath of fresh air.

It’s that rarest of beasts: a smart, side-splitting Arab comedy tackling collective faith, the presiding craving for a saviour and the primal necessity of finding meaning, or rather conjuring up one.

The underlying sentiment is simple, as Aljem explains: “We, as a nation, need something to believe in. We cannot be just individuals. We need something to unite us; something to push us collectively to go forward…even if it’s fake.”

The resulting feature juggles remarkable skill, humour and pathos, big ideas and highly entertaining set-ups, marking this Moroccan feature, which had its world premiere at Critics’ Week in Cannes, as the most original Arab debut of the year.

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Arab comedies do not have a strong - or any, for that matter - track record at Cannes, an event that has often fetishised the poverty, violence and oppression of a region that is not as homogenous or streamlined as its films sometimes make it out to be. The Unknown Saint is an anomaly in that too-predictable Arab narrative.

Robber, money, problem

It all begins with a car chase. Amine (Younes Bouab, the eternally frowning scruffy-haired anti-hero of Zero and Razia ) is being chased by the police moments after stealing a stash of money. Unable to flee from the looming entrapment, he hurriedly hides his bounty in a deserted village.

After he’s released from prison, the thief returns to the village, only to find that the shrine of an "Unknown Saint" has been erected over the spot where he hid his cash. Meanwhile the surrounding wasteland has blossomed into a sizeable community built around the mausoleum of this mysterious holy man.

To retrieve the loot, Amine enlists the help of his former partner, The Brain, a dim-witted conman whose ill-fated antics constantly derail the pair’s venture. Amine’s fate is also entangled with two different men: Kamal (Anas El Baz), a young doctor arriving in town to take charge of a dispensary that doesn’t need him; and Hassan (Bouchaib Semmak), a resident of the nearby dying village which is deserted after its people left and regrouped themselves around the new shrine.

All three characters are waiting for things that never happen: the doctor for real patients instead of the elderly women who use the dispensary as a place to hang out; Hassan and his father, for the rain which would save their dying land; and Amine for the increasingly elusive opportunity to get back his money.

Delusion is the de facto mode of life in this village, from the shrine of an imaginary saint without miracles, to the standard tablets that the doctors robotically hands out to every patients for every sickness. It is also a vision of a stagnant Morocco stuck in a standstill, a theme echoed in nearly every frame of the film.

Inspiration? Keaton, Tati, Ozu

Born in Rabat in 1988, Aljem earned his BA in film directing from the School of Visual Arts in Marrakech and later an MFA from the INSAS school in Brussels. His first four short films nearly all contained a comedic element, something that find its full expression in his full-length feature.

He garnered attention with his fifth short, The Desert Fish , a family drama about a grave-digger father who is reluctant to allow his son to peruse his dream of becoming a fisherman and leaving the land.

Largely different in tone and style from The Unknown Saint , The Desert Fish still displayed Aljem’s talent in evoking sparse landscape with meticulous exactness and generous emotionality. Echoes of the father-son relationship can also be traced in Hassan’s sympathetic connection to his father.

The genesis of Saint originated in the extensive trips Aljem used to embark on with his mother when he was a kid. “I used to notice these white shrines stranded in the vast desert, in the middle of nowhere,” he recalls. “I always found something cinematic in that.

“Many years later, while scouting for The Desert Fish , I stumbled upon one of them again. The shrine was solely surprised by an elderly guardian. I asked him which saint does this mausoleum belongs to, but he didn’t know. He was dead serious, which I found absurd. This is how it all started.”

The absurdity of the world stemming from the shrine is perfectly captured in Aljem restrained, deadpan comedic style. Inspired by Buster Keaton (in the forlorn stone faces of the characters), Jacques Tati, and by extension, Elia Suleiman, the pared-down visual structure is augmented by still tableaux where action is always contained (note: all 820 shots of the film have been storyboarded in pictures in pre-production, a testament to Aljem’s fastidiousness).

Unlike Suleiman, movement in Saint often occurs vertically rather than horizontally, allowing for more comedic possibilities and lending the film more dynamism.

This lack of camera movement is an aesthetic which Aljem developed throughout his shorts for two reasons: to sustain continuity inside the frame; and to arrive at a basic visual language.

Mostly he prefers wide-angled frames, with medium shots only intermittent and close-ups completely absent. Like the works of Tati and Suleiman, this gives the eyes of the audience the freedom to roam in any direction; unlike the other two, Aljem’s compositions are far less cluttered.

Aljem also cities the great Japanese master of family dramas, Yasujiro Ozu, as a major influence on his visual identity.

“I love how everything is so precise in Ozu’s tableaux, how actors have the freedom to move from side of the frame to the opposite one. I love how everything is so frontal in there,” Aljem says.

“As time went by, I found a harmony between my writing, that mixes comedy and drama, and this type of aesthetic. It also helped me to recognize the importance of the mise-en-scene in the narrative, the staging. The positions of the camera, the homogeneity of the staging, also reveals a lot within the narrative, as well immersing the viewer within the general atmosphere of the film.”

That pared-down visual style also extends to the characters, who defy commonplace characterisation. No one here has a backstory. No one is psychologically rounded. Rather there’s something elementary about Aljem’s characters – almost intentionally archetypal - which helps quicken the pace of the story.

The comedy is thus driven not from how the characters are, but rather from the deliciously incongruous situations they are thrust into, contrasting the realistic backdrop and the ridiculousness of the narrative.

Conjuring politics and religion

Aljem insists that the film is not anti-faith, that he wanted to be as respectful and not offensive as possible.

“We’re laughing with the characters, at the situations they’re in, and not their faith, and surely not at them. We’re not making fun of anyone,” he says.

And yet, the overriding sentiment of Saint is clearly anti-organised religion – and convincingly so. The Marxist maxim of religion as the opium of the masses is literally manifested in various strands of the story: from the village’s blind belief in the anonymous saint and the idle wait for the rain miracle, to the commodification of faith into an exotic touristic hotspot and the senseless rituals performed without a persuasive rationale.

At the same time, Aljem doesn’t entirely dismiss the possibility of high powers, permitting different interpretations for happenings that could be perceived as divine intervention, or simple coincidences.

There’s also the political dimension of religion: a tool passed on by the powers that be not always to distract from the real problems at hand, but to forge a collective goal for the masses to get behind.

Aljem explains how Moroccan society sometimes uses popular beliefs to bind it together – and how some of these are more absurd than those in the film, including the belief that Mohammed V had walked on the Moon.

The arrival of the then young monarch Mohammed VI in 1999, he says, brought new energy and hope, moving Morocco to modernity and constructing a new nation from the ashes from Hassan II’s oppressive reign; but it ultimately proved to be impermeant. “Now I think, we’re reaching the end of this hope. We now need a new energy; a new objective. Many of my friends were hoping that Morocco would win the World Cup bid, not because they care about football, but because they see the need for a new national project,” he adds.

“We needed the hope associated with the World Cup lie; we needed to hear on TV that the government will build new roads and hospitals. Same goes with the film’s saint. We know it’s fake, and yet perhaps it’s instrumental to give people something to collectively get behind, even for a short period.”

Poverty of imagination

Despite being tipped as one of the hottest tickets at Cannes this year, the funding of Saint was not something Aljem takes for granted: the success of The Desert Fish was irrelevent to the producers who initially deemed his follow-up project as too crazy.

“Producers told me that being an Arab film-maker, I should not start my feature filmmaking career with a comedy. Since it’s my first film, they asked me to stick to a ‘well-identified’ theme so that could travel internationally. They wanted it to be about terrorism, women’s conditions, poverty or immigration.

'Being Arab doesn’t make me no less human than you are' - Alaa Eddine Aljem

“Being Arab doesn’t make me no less human than you are. We have as diverse subjects and interests and concerns as the rest of the world. If someone wants to tackle poverty because they have an urge to say something about it, they can certainly. But I’m not going to do it for the sheer sake of going internationally.”

Eventually, Aljem managed to attract major French distributor, Condor and German sales company, The Match Factory, who both signed up the film on the basis of the script - the same script that was deemed unsellable by previous producers and agents.

“It was the sweetest revenge,” Aljem says. “What attracted Condor and The Match Factory is exactly what deterred the others: the fact that it’s different from the things you usually see from the Arab world.”

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form . More about MEE can be found here .

CANNES 2019 Critics’ Week

Review: The Unknown Saint

by Fabien Lemercier

15/05/2019 - CANNES 2019: In methodically exploring the precise mechanisms of the burlesque fable, Moroccan filmmaker Alaa Eddine Aljem draws a social portrait evocative of his country

“Cursed be the day they found that saint!” It is in a vast and deserted landscape, where it never rains and where the earth is reduced to rocks and dust, that Moroccan filmmaker Alaa Eddine Aljem has chosen to set the story of his feature debut, the amusing and ingenious film The Unknown Saint [ + see also: trailer film profile ] , unveiled in competition in the 58th Critics’ Week of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival . It is in this setting recalling the western, bathed in boredom, devoid of any economic assets, and at the heart of the microcosm of a small village populated by a few archetypal figures, that the director creates an almost “cartoonesque” tale of a gold rush repeatedly hampered by deeply ingrained local beliefs.

The film hits the ground running, tracing the misadventures of a thief ( Younes Bouab ) hunted by the police who buries his loot at the top of a hill in the middle of the desert, disguising the burial site as a cheap makeshift grave, before he is arrested. Ten years later, our bandit is freed from prison and thus returns, logically enough, to retrieve his treasure. But, to his extreme and very disagreeable surprise, he discovers, on the exact same location as the fake grave, a mausoleum built to the memory of an unknown saint. An object of devotion for the locals, who also see in it as a source of income from touristic pilgrimage, and who even relocated their old village to get closer to it, the site is guarded day and night. Our thief therefore moves into the inn next door, resolved to recover his money as soon as possible. But his attempts are incessantly obstructed, in one way or another, despite the help he is supposed to get from his accomplice, ironically nicknamed The Brain ( Salah Bensalah ).

Meanwhile, while a few almost exactly identical days pass, with imperceptible variations, other stories emerge: that of a father and his son, farmers who have stubbornly remained in the old, now isolated village (the older man praying for miraculous rain, the younger dreaming only of leaving); and that of a doctor newly appointed to the region and realising very quickly that he is simply, like the hammam, another weekly distraction for the local women, their imaginary ills cured by mere paracetamol. The men, meanwhile, kill time at the hairdresser’s, and every micro-event happening at the village is welcomed as a major attraction. The thief’s patience wears thinner and thinner…

Very well measured, the script written by Alaa Eddine Aljem allows him to calmly set in motion a rather diverting film, based on a very meticulous, simple, and effective comedy of situations. The film also delivers a few keys towards a social understanding of the atmosphere in parts of Morocco that are far from the modernised urban centres. But its identity as a tale that is perfectly under control (almost scientifically so) prevents it from arousing excitement, the emotions being kept at a distance from the viewer except for a few rare exceptions. This, however, does not take away from the general elegance of the film, which stands out for its hybrid style from the often very empathic and realist work coming out of North Africa these recent years.

Produced by the Moroccan society Le Moindre Geste and co-produced by the French structure Altamar Films , The Unknown Saint is sold internationally by The Match Factory .

(Translated from French)

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The unknown saint, سيد المجهول.

Directed by Alaa Eddine Aljem

Moments before his capture by police, a thief digs a grave to hide a bag of money. Released from prison years later he returns to retrieve the bag, only to find a shrine to an Unknown Saint built directly over his loot, and a brand new village constructed all around it.

Younes Bouab Salah Bensalah Bouchaib Essamak Mohamed Naimane Anas El Baz Hassan Ben Badida Abdelghani Kitab Ahmed Yarziz Rachid El Adouani

Director Director

Alaa Eddine Aljem

Producers Producers

Alexa Rivero Francesca Duca Georges Schoucair Michael Weber

Writer Writer

Editor editor.

Lilian Corbeille

Cinematography Cinematography

Amine Berrada

Production Design Production Design

Kaoutar Haddioui

Composer Composer

Amine Bouhafa

Sound Sound

Yassine Bellouquid Paul Jousselin Matthieu Deniau

Le Moindre Geste Altamar Films Chadwell International CCM Film Institute CNC

Qatar Morocco France

Releases by Date

15 may 2019, 02 oct 2019, 05 oct 2019, 01 jan 2020, 29 oct 2020, 15 jul 2021, releases by country.

Premiere Cannes International Critics' Week
Theatrical Κ-12

South Korea

Premiere Busan International Film Festival
Premiere London Film Festival
Digital 12 Netflix

100 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Hutch ★★★

This restrained comedy is built around a delightfully absurd situation. A criminal breaks down on a desert road, and before the police can catch up and arrest him he buries his bag of loot on the top of a roadside hill making it look like a grave. Once out of jail, he returns to find the site has been consecrated and a guarded mausoleum built over the grave. A town has sprung up beneath the hill to service the pilgrims who come and visit the “Unknown Saint”. Thus the film is set up as a farce: the criminal and his accomplice working out how to destroy the mausoleum to get the money, against the ragtag bunch of townspeople who guard…

Review by nɒM ƨbɿɒwʞɔɒꓭ ǝʜT (Sean) ★★★★

MIFF FILM #32

The best film I've seen at MIFF that nobody is talking about. A complex tapestry of stories are perfectly interwoven into this intelligent, thoughtful and humorous look at what makes people turn to faith and why they choose to believe

Review by Goliwadekar ★★★★ 2

Free verse - A form of poetry that does not rely on any consistent pattern of rhymes. This is precisely what An Unknown Saint does with its narrative. It flows smoothly. Despite its absurd premise and conundrums, there is a natural rhythm to it which adds to its lyrical majesty, without ever trying hard.

At the first glance, the plot seems remarkably similar to that of Blue Streak (1999) , a robber buries his loot on a hill top and when he has a chance to recover it, he finds it is now a shrine. But similarities, if any, end here. It then gently introduces its primary characters, the village they stay in and their own set of problems. Inhabitants are…

Review by Here Yesterday 🗓️ ★★★½ 2

The Unknown Saint is a delightful little gem from Morocco. A film that manages to inject plenty of dry humour within the conservative and traditional values and culture depicted.

It centres on a thief who buries his stolen loot on a little mountain top before he's captured and arrested. Upon his release from prison years later, he makes his way to that little known spot, for his much deserved payday, only to find that a shrine has been built atop his buried bag of money. It would appear that burying it with some well placed rocks on top had given the impression that it was a burial site of an unknown saint. The prospect of reuniting with his stolen money…

Review by soumaya ★★★★

" شحال هادي باش كايضرك راسك ؟ هادي عشرين عام."

I never enjoyed a Moroccan movie the way I enjoyed this one, very beautifully filmed, subtly witty, simple yet very thoughtful. It gave me Wes Anderson feels and that's the best compliment I can think of ! Please watch it

Review by Mike Kennedy ★★★★

This small gem from first-time Moroccan writer/director Alaa Eddine Aljemis is the kind of film that makes MIFF such a fascinating adventure each year. Even in cinephile Melbourne, this is the kind of film we would only get to see in a festival setting.

It is also a shining example of the excellent work Sundance is doing to foster emerging talent. Aljemis workshopped the screenplay for his black comedy at the 2016 Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab where he was mentored by Oscar-winning writer Charles Randolph (The Big Short), Brazilian writer-director Karim Aïnouz and Canadian-Indian film-maker Deepa Mehta. The result is a superbly tight screenplay that lets the humour develop slowly, sometimes over several scenes and I loved that there are…

Review by Y-glasto y ★★★★

The Film dealt with the case of the "Unknown Saint" and people in Remote Villages in Morocco believe in things like miracles and the "Unknown Saint". The Situation is real and serious and dealing with it is very difficult especially when it comes to what people believe in, that's a fine line you don't want to cross.

The director Alaa Eddine Aljem surprised me with how he treated the script, using "Wild Frames" "Long Shots" "Small Dialogue", that's had a huge effect on how he presented the story with some humor on the side. I think it was influenced by W es Anderson and Sofia Coppola directing.

The soundtrack was very simple, nothing fancy, just enough to go with the music…

Review by Souad ★★★★ 2

حنا ماشي قتالة" "اش عند راسك انت دابا؟ باحث؟

شحال هادي باش كايضرك راسك؟" "هادي عشرين عام What a delightful little gem of a movie! A Moroccan black comedy that doesn't fail to put a smile on your face every now and then, with utterly gorgeous cinematography. Minimal yet combined with a Western touch on top. Truly loved how the remote village was portrayed, the Moroccan desert, the night sky, and the landscape shots, it was all aesthetically pleasing and actually impressing. The characters were rich and the plot is one of a kind, although it dragged a bit at some point. My Honest rating is 3.5, while the extra half is for the ultimate weakness I have towards beautifully made Moroccan films.

Review by Mohcine ★★★★½

I'm not in the mood to write a whole essay on why this is one of the best Moroccan movies of all time, so I'll just say this: film m9awed a zbiiii

Review by russman ★★★

Snails need love too

Review by Doug Dillaman ★★★½

A simple setup: a thief leaves his loot buried as an unmarked grave, only to return to find it's become a mini-Lourdes of sorts. Arguably too simple to support a feature, and so the script distended to the rest of the village that's popped up in its wake. This allows plenty of side threads to pop up, from the new doctor in town to the barber/dentist to the aging farmer who blames the new shrine for the lack of rain. It's a lot of balls to juggle, and they aren't always managed deftly, but there's a lot of amusing detail, commentary, some lovely desert photography and a few wildly amusing deadpan supporting characters (MVP: "Ahmed the Brain").

Review by zakaria seekweather ★★★★ 10

im really proud to see maroccan cinema at this level but as always why does avery maroccan director miss how to properly end a movie classes?

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Cannes Film Review: ‘The Unknown Saint’

Beautifully shot and ideally cast, debuting Moroccan writer-director Alaa Eddine Aliem ’s “ The Unknown Saint ” is a droll, entertaining, absurdist fable about spirituality and greed that signals an important new talent. The events unfold near a derelict desert village, where, in a pre-title prologue, a thief buries a bag of loot on top of a hill, disguising the spot as a grave. Years later, when he returns to retrieve his booty, he is astonished and frustrated to find that a mausoleum honoring an “unknown saint” credited with performing healing miracles now covers the site. Moreover, a new village has sprung up nearby to service the pilgrims that the shrine attracts. Aliem manages to reap much fresh humor from this situation and a spritely cast of eccentric characters.

The story of the stymied thief (Younes Bouab) and his former accomplice, the sarcastically-styled Ahmed the Brain (the towering Salah Bensalah, particularly fine), plays out in parallel to, and overlaps with, that of the locals. There’s the mausoleum guard (Abdelghani Kitab), a widower who prefers his lively German shepherd watchdog (surely a strong, early competitor for the “Palme Dog”) to his own young son; the newly arrived and soon bored doctor (Anas El Baz) and his sly, paracetamol-dispensing assistant (Hassan Ben Bdida); the dextrous barber-cum-dentist (Ahmed Yarziz), who literally finds a new niche for his sideline in teeth crafting; and from the nearly empty neighboring village, failing farmer Brahim (Mohamed Naimane) and his dutiful adult son Hassan (Bouchaib Essamak), whose narrative line feels a bit anemic early on. It must be noted that the universe Aliem crafts is a strongly male one, with the speaking roles for women limited to the doctor’s elderly, time-wasting patients. And it’s a place where credulity and rumor take precedence over science and sensibility.

The Unknown Saint (2020)

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Alaa Eddine Aljem

Director, Screenplay

Top Billed Cast

Younes Bouab

Salah Bensalah

Bouchaib Essamak

Mohamed Naimane

Anas El Baz

Hassan Ben Badida

Abdelghani Kitab

Ahmed Yarziz

The hairdresser / dentist

Rachid El Adouani

Full Cast & Crew

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Original Title سيد المجهول

Status Released

Original Language Arabic

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Movie - The Unknown Saint - 2019

The Unknown Saint (2019) Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu

100 minutes
Release Date: 29 October 2020 (Greece) (more)
Genre: Comedy (more)

After a huge robbery, a criminal buries the loots in a fake grave. As he returns to the secret location, he learns that the grave has become the burial site of an unknown saint, and the village around ...Read more it has become a robust village. Will he find the treasure he left, or a far better one?

Alaa Eddine Aljem (Director)
Alaa Eddine Aljem (Writer)
Younes Bouab
Saleh Ben-Saleh
Anas El Baz
Hassan Badida / Hassan Ben Badida
Ahmed Yarziz
Bouchaib Semmak

Mohammed Naiman
Abdelghani Kitab
Rachid El Adouani
Mohamed El Moutamassik
Abdelghani Benizza
Adam Morjany

After a huge robbery, a criminal buries the loots in a fake grave. As he returns to the secret location, he learns that the grave has become the burial site of an unknown saint, ...Read more and the village around it has become a robust village. Will he find the treasure he left, or a far better one?

Release Date:
Greece [ 29 October 2020 ]
Tunisia [ 17 June 2020 ]
France [ 15 May 2019 ]
Censorship:
Is this a coloured title?:
Filming Locations

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Movie: The unknown Saint

Could someone please explain the ending of the movie "The Unknown Saint"? It has been lingering in my mind, and despite my attempts to search for an answer online, I haven't been able to find one. I would greatly appreciate any insights.

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‘saturday night’ review: jason reitman chronicles the lead-up to the first ‘snl’ show in alternately fresh and frustrating fashion.

Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Willem Dafoe, Dylan O'Brien and J.K. Simmons are among the ensemble in this dramatization of the 90 minutes before the big premiere.

By Stephen Farber

Stephen Farber

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A scene from Jason Reitman's 'SNL' movie called 'Saturday Night.'

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‘Saturday Night’ Review: Jason Reitman’s Zany, Brilliant And Outrageously Funny Ode To ‘SNL’s Opening Night Hits The Comic Bull’s Eye – Telluride Film Festival

By Pete Hammond

Pete Hammond

Awards Columnist/Chief Film Critic

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Minutes before showtime it appeared it would not fly and nothing was going right, even to the point of Michaels getting accidentally sprayed with red paint from a machine that had not been operating properly. The decision to go live was still in doubt just 10 minutes before when Tebet, fully doubting Michaels, says, “Show me Saturday Night.” Your pulse will be pounding watching this remarkable scene take hold.

Remarkably, there is such a wealth of pure gold comic situations inherent in this idea that Saturday Night becomes an even better movie than all of the comedies that were spawned by the talent honed on SNL (many produced by Michaels himself). Before its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday night (of course), Reitman said his two dreams were to be a director and to write on SNL. Here he has merged both with a treasure trove of material that has been hiding in plain sight over the past half century but now has been turned into the funniest film of 2024, no easy trick since making a movie about making comedy is full of landmines. This crew doesn’t step on any of them.

Of course it is also that casting that makes the difference in buying into this at all, so many of the actors asked to play such recognizable stars, and they all hit it out of the park. Anchoring it all is LaBelle’s Michaels, and he hits the perfect tone throughout surrounded by nightmarish events that threaten to blow his dream to smithereens. Other standouts in a cast full of them are Cory Michael Smith’s spot-on Chevy Chase; Lamorne Morris’s Garrett Morris (no relation), who gets a choice scene doing a musical warm-up number; Matt Wood’s John Belushi, playing a comic genius on the edge; Nicholas Braun ‘s twin roles of Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman; Tommy Dewey’s cutting Michael O’Donoghue, a key creative component of the early SNL; and a chilling, pitch-perfect J.K. Simmons as ’50s NBC Variety kingpin Milton Berle, a perfect juxtaposition to NBC’s comedy past just as he stops by NBC’s about-to-be comedy future . Simmons nails Berle’s visit to the set, amidst all this chaos , in a brief but unforgettable turn that has to be seen to be believed (and that includes his legendary manhood).

With less screen time, Ella Hunt’s lovely Gilda Radner, Kim Matula’s Jane Curtin and Emily Fairn’s Larraine Newman hit their marks here as well, especially in the female construction worker sketch re-created for the movie with a riotous Dylan O’ Brien’s Dan Aykroyd as the sexual object of their affection. Rachel Sennott is also excellent as writer Rosie Shuster, who was trying to keep her marriage to Michaels secret. And a personal shout-out to Finn Wolfhard as the hapless NBC page standing in front of 30 Rock hocking tickets to get people in to see this new show no one had ever heard of. It kind of made me tear up a bit because two days later after SNL’s premiere I would start my first show business job as an NBC page.

One false move and this whole ambitious soufflé could have fallen, but Reitman steers this all in style creating on the great movies about show business I have ever seen — and I have seen a lot of them. It is a shame that comedy is not always given its due, often dismissed as light compared to heavy dramas, the kind usually on display at Telluride and other festivals. Saturday Night is a breath of fresh air, and I know Reitman’s father, the late great Ivan Reitman whose films include Ghostbusters, Stripes, Twins and on and on, would be a proud dad.

Producers are Jason Blumenfeld, Peter Rice, Reitman and Kenan.

Title: Saturday Night Festival: Telluride Distributor: Columbia Pictures Release date: October 11, 2024 Director: Jason Reitman Screenwriters: Gil Kenan & Jason Reitman Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Corey Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Jon Batiste, Naomi McPherson Running Time: 1 hr and 43 mins

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‘Saturday Night’ Review: Jason Reitman Finds the Right Ensemble to Capture the Lunacy From Which ‘SNL’ Was Born

Sure, the film is a love letter to an American television institution, but Reitman includes the drugs, egos and opening-night setbacks that nearly killed 'Saturday Night Live.'

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‘Saturday Night’ Review: Jason Reitman Finds the Right Ensemble to Capture the Lunacy From Which ‘SNL’ Was Born 1 day ago

Over nearly 1,000 episodes, “ Saturday Night Live” has given America some of its most successful comedians, iconic characters and quotable catchphrases. Now, just one year shy of the pop phenom’s 50th anniversary, director Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage. “Saturday Night” kicks off at 10 p.m. on Oct. 11, 1975, and ticks its way in practically real time to Chevy Chase’s delivery of the infamous opening line. Fine, but who plays Chevy Chase? Or Gilda Radner? Or John Belushi, for that matter?

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Some of his cast aren’t even comedians by trade, such as Cory Michael Smith, the young Chevy Chase ringer, who’s acted mostly in Todd Haynes movies until now. I’d never before seen Matt Wood, who plays John Belushi, and certainly didn’t expect “Succession” cousin Nicholas Braun to appear in dual roles as Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. (Yes, Henson did puppetry, for the grown-up “Land of Gorch” segments, throughout the first season.)

That’s easily three hours of material, which explains how Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and many others wound up getting cut. But 90 minutes out, Michaels refuses to accept that he can’t somehow cram it all in. To skeptical boss Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), he insists, “You can’t expect them to recognize something they’ve never seen before.” To the all-powerful affiliates, he explains how “SNL” will be the first variety show made “by and for the generation that grew up on television.” And to NBC television exec David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), who’s ready to fall back on a rerun of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” at a moment’s notice, he does his best to look confident amid the chaos.

Like the shambolic productions in so many backstage movies, it’s a wonder that “SNL” ever made it to air, judging by the disorder Reitman re-creates here — all true to (or at least inspired by) interviews with everyone alive at the time who would share their memories of that historic night. A falling lighting rig nearly crushes Belushi and Radner (Ella Hunt) during rehearsal, one of the sets catches fire, drugs are ingested, egos are inflamed and no one can account for the llama roaming the halls (that gag is a nod to later seasons’ penchant for placing a random llama in backstage scenes).

Reitman isn’t the first to take audiences behind the scenes of “SNL” and its ilk — “30 Rock,” “Studio 60” and “The Larry Sanders Show” all demystified that world — but he does it so convincingly, “Saturday Night” seems destined to be the way we remember the night that changed television: with Radner riding the camera crane like an MGM showgirl and sad-clown Belushi taking a quiet moment on the ice.

The logistical complexity of orchestrating so many moving parts seems every bit as daunting as, say, “Birdman” or “Babylon.” The difference is, Reitman isn’t showing off. If he stages an elaborate tracking shot through multiple sets, it’s because the material calls for it. Michaels and his fellow crew members — including Rosie Shuster (the great Rachel Sennott), to whom he is married, though she’s constantly flirting with Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) — are never not multitasking. Pile all their stresses on top of one another, and there’s enough anxiety here to power New York City.

Looking for the right music to match that feeling, Reitman settled on Jon Batiste, who also plays musical guest Billy Preston. Batiste supplies a jumpy jazz score — full of clangs, bangs, rattles and drums — that’s both innovative (recorded live, like the show) and effective. By design, it sucks up every last molecule of air at times, going so far as to drown out important dialogue in the film’s Dolby Atmos sound mix. The instant Michaels steps into the control room (where Robert Wuhl mans the deck), the music stops and audiences can catch their breath … but not for long.

Described by Tebet as “a handsome funny Gentile” with sky’s-the-limit potential, Chase is cocky and combative with his co-stars, especially Belushi. But legendary comedian Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) is cockier in the movie’s most memorable — and outrageous — cameo. Together, Berle and Carson represent the titans of TV comedy until that time. Carson held such power that he could make or break a young stand-up’s career simply by inviting the comic to sit on his couch. Then “SNL” came along, and suddenly, appearing on Michaels’ show made them stars (as it did for Steve Martin and such early cast members as Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy).

What then-30-year-old Michaels understood — and LaBelle captures, alongside a sense of near-crippling panic — was that younger audiences wanted something that spoke to them, even if it meant testing the limits of NBC’s Standards department (represented here by Catherine Curtin, whose humorless censor lands the film’s biggest laughs). One of modern television’s most influential figures, Michaels possesses a clear vision, but also the wisdom to trust in talent, as when he steps aside to let Chase host Weekend Update. Not all his ideas work, as the Killer Bees (and most of the films he’s produced) would prove.

But that night was special. Reitman chronicles a turning point in television that reshaped America’s sense of humor — one that had been forecast by countercultural breakouts like Lenny Bruce, Cheech and Chong and the show’s first host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys). It’s good that Reitman (who co-wrote with Gil Kenan) waited until now, after a decadelong cold streak in the “Juno” wunderkind’s career, to take on such a project. He’s tasted failure, and even though “SNL” went on to break every record, we have to believe it could flop for the film to work. Just look who gets the last laugh.

Reviewed at Telluride Film Festival, Aug. 31, 2024. Also in Toronto Film Festival. Running time: 109 MIN.

Production: A Sony release of a Columbia Pictures presentation of a Reitman/Kenan production. Producers: Jason Blumenfeld, Peter Rice, Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan. Executive producers: Erica Mills, JoAnn Perritano.
Crew: Director: Jason Reitman. Screenplay: Gil Kenan & Jason Reitman. Camera: Eric Steelberg. Editors: Nathan Orloff, Shane Reid. Music: Jon Batiste.
With: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, J.K. Simmons, Jon Batiste, Naomi McPherson, Robert Wuhl.

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'The Unknown Saint' Review
'The Unknown Saint' ('Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu'): Film Review | Cannes 2019. Moroccan writer-director Alaa Eddine Aljem's first feature, 'The Unknown Saint,' premiered in the Critics ...
The Unknown Saint
Jul 3, 2021. The Unknown Saint, a droll and quirky satire on religious superstitions. Writer-director Alaa Eddine Aljem impresses with a film that is both suspenseful and hilarious. Rated: A ...
'The Unknown Saint' Review
Film Review: 'The Unknown Saint' Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Critics' Week), May 15, 2019. Running time: 100 MIN. ... Jon Favreau Teases First 'Star Wars' Movie in More Than 5 Years
'The Unknown Saint' Review: A Searing Dark Comedy That Recalls ...
In our The Unknown Saint review, we take a look at a Moroccan film that transcends cultural boundaries and feels like the best of the Coen brothers. ... Aljem's movie terrific belies all ...
The Unknown Saint
The Unknown Saint is a film that really enjoys itself; it strips down to basics but finds room for plenty of wry observational humour, moments of warmth and a dash of contemplation. Full Review ...
The Unknown Saint: Film Review
The Unknown Saint: Film Review. The Unknown Saint crafts a sparse yet cleverly absurd tale of greed, faith, and misfortune as an unlucky thief attempts to recover his loot from a holy site. A beat-up green car staggers down an empty desert road and its driver, a hapless thief (Younes Bouab) anxiously exits as he spots a hill nearby.
The Unknown Saint (2019)
The Unknown Saint: Directed by Alaa Eddine Aljem. With Younes Bouab, Salah Ben Saleh, Bouchaib Semmak, Mohammed Nouaimane. A criminal returns to the fake grave where he buried his loot years before and discovers that it has become the shrine of an unknown saint and a thriving little village.
The Unknown Saint review: a lean, timeless desert caper
The Unknown Saint first look: a lean, timeless desert caper. Alaa Eddine Aljem's deadpan debut plants an empty shrine over loot buried in the sands of southern Morocco, and watches a community of sun-beaten oddballs pay reverence. Younes Bouab as The Thief and Salah Bensalah as Ahmed the Brain in The Unknown Saint (Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu ...
The Unknown Saint
Slashfilm. Jul 26, 2021. For a debut to be this assured, and for a script to so deftly dance around the obvious challenges and result in a film that's delightfully, darkly comedic, The Unknown Saint shows that despite all the obvious ways in which this work could have gone horribly, risibly wrong in these rare cases miracles can come true.
The Unknown Saint (2019) Movie Review from Eye for Film
only to receive the answer: "I'm Shiite". The spare scoring from Amine Bouhafa also has a whisper of the Old West about it, perfectly matching the dusty backdrop. The film plays out like a modern-day fable, focused on the follies of men and the laws of unintended consequences, and its generosity to its characters, however dimwitted they may be ...
'The Unknown Saint' review: Thieves and miracles in ...
A minor economy has sprung up around the shrine, which delays the thief's repeated attempts to retrieve the booty. As he impatiently waits, director Alla Edine-Aljem rolls out a series of sub ...
The Unknown Saint
At turns amusing and compelling, The Unknown Saint 's subtexts eventually lose the novel absurdity established in Aljem's narrative, bringing the film to a somewhat ambivalent and convenient finale. Its characters, defined by their roles and relationships to an imaginary saint generated by a criminal act, are left more-or-less in the same ...
The Unknown Saint critic reviews
Slashfilm. Jul 26, 2021. For a debut to be this assured, and for a script to so deftly dance around the obvious challenges and result in a film that's delightfully, darkly comedic, The Unknown Saint shows that despite all the obvious ways in which this work could have gone horribly, risibly wrong in these rare cases miracles can come true.
The Unknown Saint (2019)
There is hardly an ounce of exposition in this film which is so refreshing. Dialogue is sparse, flabby scenes non-existent, extraneous shots cut. Aljem trusts the viewers to interpolate action and context without hand-holding which dramatically improves the viewing experience; no excess fat on this film.
The Unknown Saint: Robbers, riches and religion make for fresh film
The Unknown Saint: Robbers, riches and religion make for fresh film debut Anas El Baz plays a young doctor, arriving in town to take charge of a dispensary that doesn't need him (Altamar Films ...
Review: The Unknown Saint
Review: The Unknown Saint. 15/05/2019 - CANNES 2019: In methodically exploring the precise mechanisms of the burlesque fable, Moroccan filmmaker Alaa Eddine Aljem draws a social portrait evocative of his country. "Cursed be the day they found that saint!". It is in a vast and deserted landscape, where it never rains and where the earth is ...
The Unknown Saint
The Unknown Saint is a 2019 internationally co-produced comedy-drama film directed by Alaa Eddine Aljem. It was selected as the Moroccan entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. [1] Synopsis.
‎The Unknown Saint (2019) directed by Alaa Eddine Aljem • Reviews, film
Synopsis. Moments before his capture by police, a thief digs a grave to hide a bag of money. Released from prison years later he returns to retrieve the bag, only to find a shrine to an Unknown Saint built directly over his loot, and a brand new village constructed all around it. Remove Ads. Cast. Crew.
Cannes Film Review: 'The Unknown Saint'
Beautifully shot and ideally cast, debuting Moroccan writer-director Alaa Eddine Aliem's "The Unknown Saint" is a droll, entertaining, absurdist fable about spirituality and greed that ...
The Unknown Saint (2019) • Movie Reviews • Visual Parables
Movie Info Movie Info Director Alaa Eddine Aljem Run Time 1 hour and 40 minutes Rating Not Rated VP Content Ratings Violence 2/10 Language 0/10 Sex & Nudity 0/10 Star Rating ★★★★ ★ 4.5 out of 5 Relevant Quotes Man proposes, but God disposes. Proverbs 19:21-23 (Living Bible) (Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu)
The Unknown Saint (2020)
Moments before his capture by police, a thief digs a grave to hide a bag of money. Released from prison years later he returns to retrieve the bag, only to find a shrine to an Unknown Saint built directly over his loot, and a brand new village constructed all around it.
Movie
100 minutes. Released. مصري. +16. Release Date: 29 October 2020 (Greece) (more) Genre: Comedy (more) After a huge robbery, a criminal buries the loots in a fake grave. As he returns to the secret location, he learns that the grave has become the burial site of an unknown saint, and the village around...Read more it has become a robust village.
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After it rains on the grave of Ibrahim, his son realises that he was right about the Unknown Saint and that 'his' prayers worked. So he decides to blow it up and in turn finds the money, which makes him believe that his father was the real saint and builds him a mausoleum. 1. Reply. true.
'Saturday Night' Review: Jason Reitman's Uneven 'SNL' Chronicle
Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Willem Dafoe, Dylan O'Brien and J.K. Simmons are among the ensemble in this dramatization of the 90 minutes before the big premiere.
'Saturday Night' Review: Jason Reitman's Zany, Brilliant And
A top director once told me 90% of the success of his movies is casting. If you get that right, you are on your way. If that is the case then Saturday Night director and co-writer Jason Reitman ...
'Saturday Night' Review: Jason Reitman Finds an Ideal Ensemble to
Jason Reitman has written a love letter to a TV institution, but also includes the drugs, egos and setbacks that nearly killed 'Saturday Night Live.'