Raymond Depardon, one of France's foremost photographers and documentary filmmakers, combines anthropology and fiction in this story told from the point of view of Alifa, a young tribesman of the African desert at the turn of the twentieth century, a rebel who looks at the Western world from a distance. Untouched by the West is remarkable in the way it captures the feel of a landscape, from the grains of sand running under the wind to the rising storm where a camel struggles to stand. The black-and-white cinematography endows the picture with an epic, thrilling beauty.