the documentary by Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir delves into the painful history of her country

A miniature version of his Casablanca neighborhood to tell a story that is both personal and collective. “The Mother of All Lies”, the film by Asmae El Moudir, finds its strength in the originality of the reconstruction of a painful story.

The Mother of All Lies by Moroccan Asmae El Moudir, a documentary which received the Un Certain Regard Best Director prize at the last Cannes Film Festival, is in theaters on Wednesday February 28. It is first of all the story of a little Casablanca girl who makes it a point of honor to have herself photographed at the age of 12. Until then, she had no photos of herself.

To understand, she questions her mother and grandmother for whom only the photo of Hassan II, the former king of Morocco, has the right to be in their house. The questioning that she imposes on her grandmother, a bit cantankerous, extends to her parents and her neighbors in a place that is unusual to say the least.

A family business

With the help of his father Mohammed (“the most popular mason-tiler in the medina of Casablanca in the 1960s”), Asmae El Mudir has reconstituted a miniature version of her neighborhood and the characters she summoned in a story in which the filmmaker is the narrator. In its double setting where we navigate between reality and the model of the house of our childhood, dramatic memories linked to “The bread riots” of June 20, 1981 in Casablanca will pour out. The repression reportedly left at least 600 dead, particularly in the immediate entourage of the El Mounir family.

How can we tell a story whose traces are buried in the memories of the individuals who lived it? Asmae El Moudir found a very original response. By offering them miniaturized alter egos (dressed by her mother Ouarda) and a model, she seems to offer them the distance necessary to undertake a painful process. To protect herself from these memories, her grandmother, nicknamed by those around her “the dictator” and scrutinized by the close-ups of her granddaughter, has erected walls that the narrative device gradually cracks.

The filmmaker’s camera precisely reveals, with unexpected angles such as shots from below, behind the scenes. The truth thus emerges, like Asmae El Moudir herself, when she pokes her head into her miniature setting. The way in which the director proceeds is reminiscent of the commissions, often called “truth and reconciliation”, set up in certain countries to allow the national community, but especially the victims, to tell their stories and try to overcome, at least through words. , a collective tragedy.

Abstraction, the option to which Asmae El Moudir had to resort, offers incredible power to her quest for truth. In The Mother of all lies, simplicity does not take away from complexity. Quite the contrary. Like many filmmakers before her, like Rithy Panh with The Missing Image which returns to the atrocities perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Moroccan director still reminds us that we must always be wary when the photos are missing.

The sheet

Gender : Documentary
Director: Asmae El Moudir
Distribution : Zahra Jeddaoui, Mohamed El Mudir, Ouardia Zorkani, Abdallah EZ Zouid, Said Masrour and Asmae El Mudir
Country : Morocco, Egypt
Duration : 1h37
Exit : February 28, 2024
Distributer : Arizona Distribution

Synopsis: Casablanca. Young filmmaker Asmae El Moudir seeks to unravel the lies passed down in her family. Thanks to a model of the neighborhood of her childhood and figurines of each of her loved ones, she reenacts her own story. It is then that the wounds of an entire people emerge and the forgotten history of Morocco is revealed.