The Sheltering Sky
A disillusioned American couple's desperate journey through postwar North Africa becomes a harrowing test of love and survival as they confront the desert's dangers and the emptiness within.
“A woman's dangerous and erotic journey...”
Synopsis
An American couple drift toward emptiness in postwar North Africa.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 21
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Gabriella CristianiShot by Vittorio StoraroScored by Ryuichi SakamotoDesigned by Ferdinando Scarfiotti
Box Office
1990 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.1× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$2.1M
Also known as
- Himmel über der Wüstede
- Un thé au Saharafr
- Il tè nel desertoit
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Cast & Crew
21 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Directors
1Writers
3Producers
1Other crew
7Parents Guide
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