Abstract

In the past decade, Moroccan filmmaking has documented the transitions taking place in contemporary society. Whether the films are made in French, Arabic, Berber, or a mixture of all three, language becomes secondary to the images that filmmakers seek to convey to their audiences. For the most part, films made since 1999, the year marking the end of the “Lead Years” (Les Années de plomb, 1963–1999) under the dogmatic and repressive rule of King Hassan II, are socially engaging. Made in a social-realist style that seeks not only to entertain but also to educate audiences about the sociocultural and political transitions that are taking place in society, Moroccan filmmakers depict a culture on the move. History is being reviewed and retold to remind and educate Moroccans of and about the atrocities that took place during the Lead Years. Human rights’ abuses, torture, women’s emancipation, freedom of speech, poverty, unemployment, and the plight of urban street children in Casablanca are the themes of today’s Moroccan cinema. No stone is left unturned, as filmmakers push the envelope of social consciousness to expose the challenges of contemporary Moroccan society. In the past decade, the films Casanegra (Nourredine Lakhmari, 2008), L’Os de fer (Hicham Lasri, The Iron Bone, 2007), Les Anges de Satan (Ahmed Boulane, Satan’s Angels, 2007), and Casablanca (Farida Benlyazid, 2002) reveal that in the era of intense globalization, urban spaces in Morocco have become conflicted, fragmented spaces. The modern city is for these filmmakers a corrupted human space that rejects the laws of traditional life, dislocates the individual from his/her clan, and leads to the dissolution of the social contract between man and his community. In the films analyzed in this article, the urban space is one that fosters reflection on the price of modernity, technology and the hypothetical Western advances of the globalized age.

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