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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Husband review – family-man study is Made in Chelsea meets Curb Your Enthusiasm

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Docu-comedy follows married directors Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum to New York in a subtle follow-up to The New Man

Film-maker Josh Appignanesi has in the past made successful movies: Song of Songs, in the high arthouse mode in 2005, and popular satire The Infidel in 2010. But co-directing with his wife, author and academic Devorah Baum, he has recently got in front of the camera and hit a rich new seam of autofictional or possibly autofactual docu-comedy. The New Man documented – or sneakily semi-fabricated – Appignanesi as the hyper-annoying expectant dad with madly dishevelled hair who is unable to help his pregnant partner in any practical way, and feels existentially undermined by the whole process.

Now Appignanesi and Baum are back: it is three years later and they have two children. Baum is going to New York on a prestigious signing/lecture tour to promote her book about feelings: Appignanesi is going along (and so are the kids, and a niece to look after them) to make a film about his own feelings on the matter. Baum thoughtfully paces the New York streets with Appignanesi capering beside her, jabberingly excited and yet weirdly and pre-emptively depressed about anything disappointing or bad that might happen in the future. To his wife’s exasperation, he is once again the massively unhelpful overgrown manchild.

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