Moroccan Movies in Berlin: Between Taboos and Stereotypes

Berlin - Nine Moroccan films were showcased at a recent Berlin film festival. Held between September 1 - 4, the festival was a rare opportunity to discover works by young Moroccan filmmakers.

The Moroccan Film Days festival, running September 1-4 in Berlin, celebrated “upheaval and diversity” in Moroccan cinema. The festival was hosted by the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and Zentrum Moderner Orient. Initially planned before the Arab Spring, the festival showcased nine Moroccan films released between 2001-2010, many of which dealt with social taboos and reflected the process of social and political transition in Morocco, spanning the past twenty years. The films explore themes ranging from Imazighen culture to the rights of political prisoners and women, human rights, and the dissolution of patriarchal structures.

After the screenings, moderators facilitated discussions with three of the visiting directors: Yasmine Kassari, The Sleeping Child (2004), Swell Noury and Imad Noury, Heaven’s Doors (2006), and Talal Selhami, Mirages (2010). Also present was Noufissa Sbaï, who produced Cry No More (2003) by Narjiss Nejjar, the film chosen to open the festival.

The films were chosen because they break the silence on controversial issues in Moroccan society.

A feature length film, Cry No More takes place in a remote village in the Atlas mountains of Morocco. The village is inhabited by women who sell their bodies, receiving men only if they pay. In the film’s opening moments, the film’s protagonist, Mina, returns to the village after spending 30 years in prison. She tries to end prostitution by teaching the women carpet weaving. Mina’s daughter, who resents her mother, opposes the plan and sees no point in abandoning prostitution and changing her life conditions.

Except for the three main characters, Mina, her daughter, and the bus driver who accompanies Mina to the village, most of the actors in Nejjar’s film are female extras living in the region where the film was shot. The film, shown at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, was controversial in Morocco, because of the radical and confrontational way it deals with patriarchal society. Some critics, not necessarily conservatives, accused the filmmaker of deceiving and exploiting the village women acting in her film, who did not know they were playing themselves. Some of these women faced serious familial problems resulting from the film.

Another filmmaker, Leïla Kilani, uses a documentary style to address another complicated and controversial issue in Morocco. Her film, Our Forbidden Places (2008), follows four families on their search for the truth of what happened to those who disappeared during the “Years of Lead” in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During that period, tens of thousands of people opposing the regime of King Hassan II (1961-1999) were 'disappeared.' Kilani traces the lives of the four families as they make their way through the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, a government body set up in 2004 by King Mohammad VI aiming to foster national reconciliation for those affected by the disappearances.

Mirages by the young director Talal Selhami deals with unemployment among Morocco’s youth. The film is a genre piece which blends horror, thriller, and fantasy elements. The film follows four young men and a young woman with different areas of specialization who compete for a position within a multinational corporation recently established in Morocco. Following an interview with the CEO, the five candidates find themselves lost in the desert. They embark on an exhausting journey that drives them to kill one another. In the barren desert their encounters with otherworldly zombie-like creatures end in bloodshed.

Sonja Hegasy from Zentrum Moderner Orient, one of the festival’s organizers, said that the films were chosen because they break the silence on controversial issues in Moroccan society. Additionally, the films possess high artistic value, many winning well-known European film awards.

Irit Neidhardt, a German producer at Mec Film, felt that some of the selections were problematic. The films, she said, open a window on complicated issues without dealing with them in depth. Neidhardt, who is quite familiar with Arab cinema having produced Lebanese director Simon El Habre’s film The One-Man Village (2008), said that the dialogue and plots in many of the films are weak, adding that winning European or other awards does not necessarily mean the films are good. Neidhardt argued that the films’ controversial quality is reflected in their targeting of foreign audiences, even though the filmmakers are Moroccan. She added that many of the filmmakers were unable to get close to their characters, not digging deep into their worlds or penetrating their inner selves.

The Moroccan Film Days did succeed in at least one of its aims. It provoked discussion about the challenges of addressing controversial issues without delving boldly into them. The festival underscored the difficulty that young Arab filmmakers face in developing a mature cinematic language.

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.