Arab Cinema’s Moment of Truth
SOURCE: FAIR OBSERVER
BY: VIKRAM ZUTSHI
Artists are the bellwether of society, and if Arab cinema is anything to go by, the region is at the cusp of another major upheaval.
Nabil Ayouch’s films stay with us long after the lights have ceased to flicker on celluloid. His stark, intimate and deeply affecting portraits of life in Morocco have won him the admiration of cineastes around the world. Never one to back down from unsparing and often transgressive critiques of his native Morocco, Ayouch’s films have attracted their fair share of controversy, including the uproar that followed the release of Much Loved, a bold and remarkably frank tale about the lives of four prostitutes in modern-day Marrakech.
His first feature, Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets, is a visceral crime drama about a loose gang of about 20 homeless young boys set against the backdrop of the Casablanca docks. The kids sniff glue to escape from their harsh reality, in effect creating an alternate fantasy world. The boys have dreams of traveling to distant lands as cabin boys on a ship. Ali is killed early in the film while trying to leave the gang with three other renegades. The rest of the film revolves around his comrades trying to arrange a decent burial to honor their friend.
Perhaps only an artist of Ayouch’s caliber could transform harsh topics like child abuse, prostitution and drug addiction into what feels at times like a magical realist fable. His next significant outing, Horses of God, was adapted from Mahi Binebine’s novel, The Stars of Sidi Moumen, about the 2003 Casablanca bombings. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2012. The bombings were the deadliest terrorist attacks in Morocco’s history. The suicide bombers were all residents of Sidi Moumen, a shantytown on the outskirts of Casablanca. The film delves into the gritty lives of the bombers in the years leading up to the attack and dissects the corrosive social forces that lead individuals to carry out acts of senseless violence.
PROVOCATIVE SPACES
After Horses of God, Ayouch wrote and directed Much Loved, which examines the underbelly of the sex trade through the eyes of four upscale prostitutes living and working in modern day Morocco. Noha (Loubna Abidar), Randa (Asma Lazrak), Soukaina (Halima Karaouane) and Hilima (Sara Elalaoui) are four feisty, free-spirited and garrulous prostitutes sharing an apartment and a devoted chauffeur, Said (Abdellah Didane), who ferries them to lavish parties and orgies hosted at the palatial homes of their rich Saudi clients.
Ayouch’s treatment is non-judgemental, the brash female protagonists mouth bawdy and explicit dialogue, and the camera takes us into dark and provocative spaces seldom seen in Arab cinema. One of Soukaina’s customers reads poetry to her all night and is unresponsive to her feminine wiles until she discovers gay porn on his laptop, leading to an eruption of violence in the bedroom. Noha’s mother disapproves of her lifestyle and banishes her from the family home, but is happy to take her money nevertheless. Randa is initiated into the pleasures of lesbian love by a woman she meets at a nightclub and realizes she prefers women after all. In one scene, the girls are lying in bed, gossiping and watching a Bollywood musical on a laptop. Noha tells her friends she would gladly offer the lead actor a 50% discount on her services if he were interested.
The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and at the Director’s Fortnight section of Cannes in 2015 to near universal acclaim. Following the Cannes screening, a statement was released by the Moroccan Ministry of Communication, effectively banning the film: “The Moroccan authorities have decided not to allow this projection. It has serious contempt for moral values and the Moroccan woman, and is a flagrant breach of the Kingdom.”A Facebook page was set up calling for the execution of the director and lead actress Loubna Abidar, both of whom have subsequently received numerous violent threats.
The public outrage over the film is ironic when one considers that Marrakech is a well-known destination for sex tourists from Europe and the Middle East. Sex work is a mainstay of the economy and, according to a Ministry of Health study, more than 50% of the prostitutes pay for the upkeep of their families through the sex trade.
A researcher in sexual identity at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Abdessamad Dialmy, points out the inherent hypocrisy around prostitution in a country whereit is a pervasive social phenomenon. “Sex labor is an informal response to unemployment,” he explains, “In certain regions, it allows the economy to function. It gives work to taxis, hotels and so on. It helps the economy expand.”
SHAKING UP THE ESTABLISHMENT
Ayouch’s most recent film, Razzia, is by far his most ambitious. Spanning more than 30 years, Razzia attempts to capture all the hopes and contradictions of a country grappling with its modern identity. “It is [set in] Morocco, but ‘Razzia’ goes well beyond that,” the filmmaker says. Even countries that have long believed in “civil rights and essential freedoms, such as the United States, are taking a giant step backwards and falling into autocracy,” he adds. “Though the Nazism of the 1940s has been replaced by modern ideologies, we remain at the heart of a resistance against totalitarianism.”
