Young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn’t even her. She decides to explore the past and its mysteries by creating a handmade replica of the Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up. There, she begins to interrogate the tales her family tells about their home and their country. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. Her grandmother, the family’s matriarch, is the reason so many dark facts and painful memories have been buried in the past. She’s the personification of her whole country. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what is real to the surface.
Morocco, Egypt, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar 2023, '96
DIRECTOR: Asmae El Moudir
SCENARIO: Asmae El Moudir
CAMERA: Hatem Nechi
MONTAGE: Asmae El Moudir
MUSIC: Nass El Ghiwane
PRODUCERS: Asmae El Moudir
FESTIVALS & AWARDS:
Sydney FF: Sydney Film Prize (2023)
Cannes FF: L’Œil d’or; Un certain regard (2023)
Durban IFF: Best International Documentary (2023)
IDFA (2023)
Karlovy Vary IFF (2023)
CPH:DOX (2024)
Asmae El Moudir
Asmae El Moudir (born in 1990 in Salé) is a Moroccan film director, screenwriter and producer. She studied at La Fémis in Paris and holds a master's degree in production from the Superior Institute of Information and Communication in Rabat and a bachelor's degree in documentary cinema from the Abdelmalek Essaâdi University in Tetouan. She also graduated in 2010 from the Moroccan Film Academy in Film studies (ISCA). Asmae has directed documentaries for SNRT, Al Jazeera Documentary, BBC and Al Araby TV. She has won important national and international awards and her films have been screened in festivals worldwide. After making a number of short films, Asmae completed her first feature documentary, The Postcard, in 2020. The Mother of All Lies is her second feature film.
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