The Mother of All Lies

Kadib Abyad

A Moroccan filmmaker movingly weaves together the recent past of her family and country through an exquisite reproduction of her local neighbourhood.

Asmae El Moudir has no visual record of her family’s past. Her grandmother, a domineering matriarch who presides over the family and the street in Casablanca that they have lived in for generations, has destroyed all photographs and long insisted that no new ones be taken. Her anxiety is traced back to the Casablanca bread riot that took place on 29 May 1981, when poorer neighbourhoods rebelled in protest against rising food prices and were massacred by state troops. With his collection of intricately detailed models, El Moudir’s father has recreated life in the neighbourhood during that time, and the filmmaker employs them to interrogate her family and friends’ memories of what took place, the physical and psychological impact of it, and the knotty emotions that have festered across subsequent decades.

Content Guidance: Film contains flashing images.