The Mother of All Lies review – pursuing the truth of Morocco’s brutal dictatorship years

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Asmae El Moudir employs a delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony to brilliantly evoke personal and collective trauma Between those who refuse to remember and those who struggle to forget, a tumultuous clash of minds occupies the centre of Asmae El Moudir’s inventive documentary, a prize-winner at last year’s Cannes film festival. Through a constellation of clay figurines and dollhouse-style miniature sets, most of which were constructed by El Moudir’s father, the director recreates her oppressive childhood in the Sebata district of Casablanca. Under the watchful eyes of her domineering grandmother Zahra, all personal photos are banished from the house, save for a picture of King Hassan II. The delicate mix of handmade replicas and oral testimony brilliantly evokes the personal and collective trauma that stem from Morocco’s “Years of Lead” – a period of state brutality under Hassan II’s dictatorial rule. Lingering on the nimble fingers of El Moudir’s father as he puts t
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All the Beauty and the Bloodshed review – Nan Goldin takes on big pharma

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Documentary follows Goldin, the artist who became addicted to OxyContin, as she confronts the wealthy art patrons who profited from its sale

The part of the Sackler family behind the company Purdue Pharma have become notorious for their addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin which blighted innumerable American lives, while the Sacklers culturewashed the resulting colossal profits with conceited museum donations. There was hardly a museum in any first world capital city that didn’t salute their narcissism with a “Sackler wing” or a “Sackler courtyard”. Their story was first substantially told by the New Yorker’s investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in his book Empire of Pain.

Purdue’s creepy genius lay not in science, or pharmaceuticals, or medicine – but marketing. It wasn’t that they invented opioids; these had existed in various forms but had long been considered too dangerous for any but the most extreme pain management, or in terminal palliative care; Purdue simply persuaded the US medical profession to prescribe them in pill form for much less serious cases. Then the nation’s addiction agony was recycled into art-world prestige.

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