Film Commission Torino Piemonte

February 2008. A group of volunteers working in the field of the international cooperation is on the way to Oualia, a council in Mali 300 Km away from the capital, Bamako. The train they are travelling on during their journey across Africa is ruled by a feeling of slowness and uncertainty. " Likely time of arrival": this is what you can read on the blackboards in the railway stations, in a land where planning is not allowed. Thus opens "Harmattan", an "on the road" documentary which shows, from the standpoints of the volunteers and of the people from Oualia, two worlds which meet and try to understand each other, without being too much of a nuisance. Harmattan is the name of the dry wind of Mali, a chaotic wind which blows in no particular direction and which embodies Africa's contradictions.