Festival in the Desert (E)

Out to buy: On DVD

From Woodstock to Glastonbury, there has never been a festival quite like it — and there has certainly never been quite such a dramatic festival film.

Last year’s Festival in the Desert took place in a remote region of Mali populated only by nomadic Tuareg tribesmen, reached by a bone- crunching two-day drive from Timbuktu deep in the Sahara. We see the stage being built in the sand, the tents being pitched and the musicians playing against a fantastical landscape of endless dunes, across which the Tuareg, dressed in striking robes and blue turbans, ride back and forth on their camels. Among those who made the journey to play were Robert Plant, the French band Lo’jo and internationally famous African artists such as Oumou Sangare and Ali Farka Toure. Then there are the local Tuareg musicians, who play an intense and ancient form of desert blues that is utterly mesmerising. They ought to rename it the festival of dreams.