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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Film-maker Hassan Nazer on his love letter to Iranian cinema

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The Scottish-Iranian director’s heartwarming new film, Winners, tells the tale of a child in Iran with a passion for movies. He talks about escaping to Europe and juggling four restaurant jobs to fund his early works

Hassan Nazer was in his first month at university in Iran when he realised that he would have to leave his homeland to fulfil his dream of becoming a film-maker. As a fledgling theatre director, he had been “red-flagged” – a possibly irredeemable offence – for putting women on stage in the holy city of Mashhad. His father, who ran a family confectionery business from a factory outside Tehran, had been opposed to his career choice from the start, but one of his uncles was on his side. “He said, after you get a red flag in this age, they’re not going to let you work. So basically, if you want to go into cinema or continue with theatre, this is not your place. You need to leave.”

Nazer had avoided military service, and had no passport or visa, so his uncle paid for him to be smuggled across the border into Turkey. “I didn’t have a destination at the time, I just wanted to go somewhere else,” he says. It took six gruelling months, often travelling on foot, to reach Europe, where his uncle put him in touch with a Kurdish family who had found asylum in Scotland and were willing to help, as they had been helped by his family back in Iran at an early stage of their own migration.

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