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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The Strays review – Netflix’s baity social thriller fizzles out

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The shadow of Get Out looms over Nathaniel Martello-White’s chiller about a light-skinned woman whose past unravels her manicured suburban life

There’s a heavy-handed ominousness from the first frame of The Strays, Netflix’s new entry into the stuffed category of social horror. Dissonant music plays over a concrete block apartment building in London, in which Cheryl (Ashley Madekwe), a light-skinned Black woman, appears in distress. There are bank statements crumpled on the counter, a headline blaring “Black kids betrayed by schools”, a mention of credit card debt in a phone call to her sister, a voice-cracking lament of wanting more. It’s the mid-2000s, and someone keeps calling Cheryl on her old brick phone before she walks out the door with a duffel bag and note about popping to the hairdresser, presumably on the run.

It’s an unsettling, propulsive start that provokes several promising questions – where is she going, why is she leaving, who is the sinister voice on the answering machine, the baselines of a thriller. Some get answered, but most do not, in any satisfying or specific way. British actor/writer Nathaniel Martello-White’s directorial debut nudges at some uncomfortable fault lines of race and class, but tends to over-index unearned suspense for character development or insight.

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