Le miracle du Saint Inconnu

Immediately before his arrest, a thief manages to bury his loot atop a hill in the Moroccan desert. After a long prison sentence, he returns to pick it up only to find a new village there with a heavily guarded shrine right over his stash. He wants the loot back, but can't rob the now holy burial site. He'll have to become part of the community to get his illegal property back.

Debut director and scriptwriter Alaa Eddine Aljem's bone-dry crime film ponders religion and community-building in unusual ways. He depicts the small desert village as a dynamic, unpredictable place that develops into a fully fledged community through a combination of coincidence, superstition and tradition. A new dilemma emerges: taking his loot robs the nascent collective of its sole reason for existence.