The film’s journey

Festivals and selections

• November 2024 Cinemística Festival, Granada (Spain) — selection. Festival entry (PDF)

  The film was selected for the 10th Cinemística Festival in Granada, Spain, held in November 2024 under the theme “Ritos, Mitos y Cotidianeidad”.

  Claude Leroy, a designer of abstract games, presents his fiction feature Histoire des sables (2024), a surrealist — or unrealist — fable shot in Occitanie with a mostly local cast and crew, whose pitch might be: “a palaeozoologist meets a trio of sirens…”

Screenings and encounters

• 10 April 2026 Espace Gérard Philipe, Jarny — film-concert evening.

  Organiser

  Compagnie du Jarnisy | Théâtre-Maison d’Elsa, in partnership with the town of Jarny

  Concert by the Vent d’anges orchestra, conducted by Loris Binot, featuring the film’s score (composed by Patrick Leroy) and pieces from its repertoire, with a screening of Histoire des sables by Claude Leroy and Sabri Tida (2024, 82 min, France, Mantiquo).

  Is immortality worth living? The characters offer their answer, somewhere between parody and phantasmagoria. The chorus of ancient drama is made up of the regulars at a village bar. Their prankish ravings feed the plot of the film, which offers a date with a trio of sirens. It is no accident that Ulysses took the trouble to listen to them. Homer merely evoked their song; he told us nothing of the words. The ending of Histoire des sables reveals them to you exclusively.

• 14 April 2026 Cinéma Klub, Metz — screening.
• May – June 2026 Cinéco — four screenings.
  • 12 May 2026 — Saint-Jean-du-Gard
  • 24 May 2026 — Sainte-Croix-Vallée-Française
  • 27 May 2026 — Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort
  • 9 June 2026 — Lasalle

  Synopsis

  This unusual work, born in our valleys, revisits an old debate: is immortality worth living? The characters offer their answer, somewhere between parody and phantasmagoria. As in ancient theatre, some of them belong to a chorus — that of the regulars at a village bar. And it is from their prankish ravings, their collective fabulation, that the plot of the film is born…

  Review

  Given the craft and originality of this dreamlike, theatrical, experimental film, close to a Greek tragedy, Cinéco simply had to show it to you. It carries the touch of Bertrand Mandico; you are carried away and led astray, you feel caught in the trap “of a plot hatched by a group of pranksters”. An original and strange work.

Genesis

Histoire des sables grew out of an encounter between artists and makers from all walks of life: singers, dancers and choreographers, mimes, jugglers, circus performers, street actors, musicians, boat builders, visual artists, costume makers, sound and image technicians, theatre people, writers and filmmakers.

Around Claude Leroy’s screenplay and dialogue, Sabri Tida brought this singular troupe together, sparking a playful, festive momentum that carried through to the editing and post-production supervised by Julien Colin.

Interview with Claude Leroy