Michael Roes

Sharing a sensitivity to local customs, an interest in the traditions of the Arab world, and a similar fate, the two diary accounts closely intertwine.

Language and culture may keep people apart, but the experience of physical sensation forms a bond that is deeper than the superficial factors which separate the human race.

His first feature film Someone is Sleeping in My Pain, a contemporary version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, was shot in New York and Yemen with tribal warriors (2000–2001).

This road movie and the novel Weg nach Timimoun by Michael Roes are based on the Ancient Greek myth of Orestes who returned to Mycenae together with his friend Pylades to kill his mother and her lover in revenge of their murder of his father.

Together with his friend Nadir young Laid reluctantly embarks on a trip to his hometown Timimoun, the legendary oasis in the Sahara desert.

The film and novel are a kind of anthropological journey full of danger and adventure through a country torn with political tension and under the growing influence of religious fundamentalism.

In strong and vivid language Roes paints a picture of a society with violent fathers and hard-hearted mothers, but also with tenderful friendships.

His wide talent as a poet, novelist, play writer, essayist and film maker and his interest in outsiders puts him into the tradition of Jean Cocteau, Pier Paolo Pasolini or Bruce Chatwin.