Journey Never Ends
Experiencing the uniqueness and authenticity of Morocco
Directed by Michael Haussman
Directed by Michael Haussman, Journey Never Ends is a visually stunning and deeply personal short film, retracing the director’s path, from Tangier to the Sahara, first taken over 25 years ago. Through this documentary, Haussman returns to Morocco—a place that became his muse—capturing the raw beauty and timelessness of its landscapes and people. Haussman frames the honest moments of his travels, blending the intimacy of documentary filmmaking with expressionistic visuals, creating an authentic experience for viewers.
Journey Never Ends is deeply personal, retracing a path you took inspired by Paul Bowles' 'The Sheltering Sky.' How did your initial journey and meeting with Bowles influence the making of this film?
When I first landed in Morocco and met Paul Bowles, it was the early nineties, and all was new for me. Besides the Call to Prayer echoing through the minaret and reminding me that I was someplace far away, Tangier was a city on the edge, with no tourist hotels, sort of like an older Havana or Marseilles, as described in the Sheltering Sky. You had to watch your back and who you befriended. There were no restaurants to go to in the evening, and if you wanted a drink, you went to The Hotel Minzah, which has its own history of WWII spies and International Zone smugglers. If you take this Tangier model and unfold it across all of Morocco and the Sahara, it was still a super untamed country at that time, and Paul Bowles’s short stories were alive in every corner I traveled. Paul supplied me with many addresses to visit, and even though certain hotels had become restaurants, it was still very much Paul Bowles territory.
Setting out in 2024, I knew I could never replicate the experience of taking in these sights, sounds, and smells for the first time, but the philosophy of Paul Bowles and being a traveler, not a tourist, remained. His idea of adapting to each situation and not needing to be in any certain place at any time still resonated, but just updated itself. The journey was still the experience; this was how we shot the film, encountering each scene for the first time and letting this lead us with no agenda.
The outskirts of the larger cityscapes had changed, but the central medinas remained historically untouched and probably will remain so for another 50 years. Also, the countryside and landscape between these cities, which are great distances across diverse Moroccan cultures and dialects, did not change much at all. The spirit of Paul Bowles was still very much alive in all these places today.
To compare the two journeys is to say, a great gong went off for me on my first journey through Morocco, and I could still feel its resonance today.
The use of lens flares throughout the film adds an almost ethereal quality to the visuals. What inspired this choice, and can you share with us how you achieved such stunning effects?
When traveling, we all take in the details of a journey, whether it be a drape in the wind, the mane of a galloping horse, or the smell of mint tea. We are selectively choosing from the bigger picture where and what we want our senses to focus on. I wanted to emulate this feeling, to take the viewer on a trip, seen from the subjective POV of the traveler.
I wanted to direct the audience’s eye through selective focus, so I investigated tilt and shift still photography lenses, which bring a certain focal plane into focus and let the rest of the picture fall off. When we did camera tests, Antonio Paladino and I found the tilt and shift lens made everything look like a miniature toy world and were too tedious and time-consuming. Like a documentary, we needed to move fast because our moments were fleeting. So, Antonio had this glass maker in Berlin create certain large lens filters with areas of beveled glass where the image would fall out of focus, which we could control quickly and easily. This is an effect you can only achieve live, through a filter, not in post-production, because of the way light refracts and flares, and objects poetically blur as they pass through these fields.
The intention was to feel the personal POV of a traveler on a journey, which I think we achieved, but I also think it added more unexpected emotion.
The soundscape truly immerses the audience in the Moroccan experience portrayed. Can you discuss your collaboration with Giovanni Perez and how you crafted the film's unique auditory world?
The soundscape was something we wanted to be real, yet expressionistic, like the subjective visual POV. We wanted to direct the audience to what we wanted them to hear in each scene, whether it be just the wind, horse hooves, a weaver’s wheel, or a splash of water. We limited ourselves to using one sound per scene. But the real magic came through, what Orson Welles describes as… “A series of fortunate accidents.”
We went through many different edits and Giovanni would always be there providing new, amazing sounds. As we went through the different cuts, an old sound would sometimes accidentally remain in place where the visual had changed, but when we heard the old sound effect played back with a new visual, seemingly out of context, sometimes it added more depth to the new visual. An example: Midway through the piece, we journey through a narrow, mysterious medina, and we hear a heartbeat. The heartbeat was something Giovanni had designed for a shot of a woman’s neck, which is now out, but when I heard it, it suddenly added a whole new emotional element to traveling through a mysterious medina. It felt like that anxious feeling we get when journeying into the unknown, when our heartbeat and adrenaline increase. Once this happened, we took a step deeper and less literal on how we treated the other scenes.
Once the Rachid Taha track kicks in, we remove the sound effects because they would never be heard, except a few, which actually pop from the track as almost musical cues. This section is really about the track sucking you in and entertaining you as our traveler has now gone from observer to experiencing this world.
In the end, we wanted to pull the plug and feel the solitude of the Sahara, just the wind and sand blowing, as if we had hit the end of the journey… which never ends.
Morocco's landscapes are a central character in your film. How did you select the locations, and can you share with us what it was like filming in such diverse and beautiful environments?
I chose this journey because it held emotional significance, but I also knew it was the most diverse and least visited path across Morocco. We started at the very tip of the African continent, in crazy Tangier, where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, and ventured across the Hashish capital of the world, the Riff Mountains, then dropped into the ancient Fez medina, which has not changed since 800 ad, then through vast rock deserts, into cedar forests, and finally into the immense and epic Sahara Desert. It took many days to travel this route while filming, but again, the Journey is the experience.
One thing I purposely avoided was trying to be too postcard-like with any landscapes. That was not the intention of the journey. The idea was to find these distant places and perches, which only a traveler would find and see meaning in. To allow ourselves to find all these spots, we needed to utilize every method of transportation in Morocco - by foot, cars, taxis, buses, horse carts, trains, bicycles, and mopeds. It was truly about movement, and we did it all on every conceivable moving object.
I remember at the end of the shoot, we arrived at our destination: the amazing Sahara sand dunes. Antonio and I spent half a day hiking with gear and getting super deep. The top of each dune offered a different view, presenting us with yet another epic vista, each shot better than the last, until we could go no further. We were exhausted, but being surrounded by the huge Sahara was exhilarating. I remember Antonio looking out, completely inspired, and I said to him, “I hate shots of sand dunes. They make my toes curl.” We both laughed like lunatics until Antonio asked the obvious, “Then why the hell did we come all the way out here?” I replied, “To shoot it in a way we have not seen, even if it just means a close-up.”
That was sort of our philosophy for the whole film – shoot it in a way we have not seen, how a traveler would see it.
“I wanted to emulate this feeling, to take the viewer on a trip, seen from the subjective POV of the traveler.”
The colour palette is both rich and evocative. What emotions or themes did you aim to convey through these earthy tones and deep colours?
We really did not push the overall color spectrum on the film toward any one look. We went for a look that was real to what we saw at that moment.
It did not feel right to give the film a warm, romantic hue or any overall look, but instead to push the theme discovery and make each scene its own moment. Meaning, if there was a distracting bright color, we might pull that down or push a certain color scheme that was prevalent in that scene. We were expressionistic in what we wanted the viewer to see in each scene, but we were careful never to go too far in any style.
Again, we were blessed with the passing lights of a journey and seeing the beauty in the unexpected. Example: When filming in an obscure Tangier hotel pool at night, we discovered the underwater lights were like a disco, fading from blue to yellow to green to red. Of course, they were hideous, but that was our point: finding beauty in the hideous. We embraced the concept, putting our talent in the lights, and shot very slow motion, giving us a choice of colors in the edit. We ended up choosing red. In retrospect, had we been given any choice to light underwater, we would never have chosen red.
You’ve mentioned how your journey through Morocco had a profound impact on your life. How did this revisit, decades later, compare to your first trip? Did you discover any new perspectives or feelings about the places you traveled and how would you say these places influenced your creative process and storytelling?
Any of the places I had previously been, like the medinas of Tangier and Fez, I explored on a deeper level on this journey. Metaphorically speaking, on my first trip, I would have been blown away at the gate, but this time, I blew past the gate and went straight inside. Also, I was more familiar with certain towns on this trip than my first and had that insider knowledge.
Seeing how the bigger cities had grown on the outskirts, with new populations of disenfranchised people from the country looking for work in the center, offered a whole new view and definition of city life. These miles of poor tenement buildings and scraps of land have become mini-cities. The apartments, shops, streets, restaurants, and activities of these people are very different than in the center. I truly fell in love and was inspired by these suburbs. We filmed in a lot of these places in every city. These may not be the historic medinas, nor do they have it so well, and certainly have a right to fight for better, but these places were completely new visuals, new populations, that were never here before. These new cityscapes became, for me, the new mystery, the new people. There is great beauty in this collision of old meeting new - Sheep grazing in the middle of the street medians, kids riding horses in the construction rubble, open fires by taxi stands, tents joining buildings, people living old ways in a modern city structure.
This was one of the elements I liked most about this film - these are the areas a new traveler would go to today. A tourist, no, but a traveler, yes. Paul Bowles would have said the same.
Having created such a personal and immersive film, what do you envision for your future projects? Are there more journeys or explorations you're looking forward to capturing?
I would love to adopt this filmmaking approach to many more projects. It is a documentary film with artistically (expressionistic) composed frames.
This way of recording a place has the honesty of real people in real situations but is framed and filtered through an artistic eye. It is a shooting strategy that could change and adapt to any place, any culture, and every story. Whether that place is Cleveland, Ohio, or Havana, Cuba, it’s a very entertaining, honest, exciting, and beautiful way to experience many places in the world.
Production Company: Supply&Demand
Director: Michael Haussman
Producer - Tim Case
Exec Producer - Charleen Manca, Matt Zion-Basile
Line Producer - Cecile Leroy
DoP: Antonio Paladino
Actor: Brice Bexter
Service Company Morocco: Dune Films
Editor: Marco Perez, Joe Hughes, Union Editorial
Colorist : Claudio Beltrami
Sound: Giovanni Perez
Morocco Executive Producer: Jimmy Abounoum
Production Manager: Hicham Balafrej, Mohsine Aboudafir