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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Call My Agent!’s Laure Calamy: ‘I have too much energy’

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The ebullient French star on her hyperactive new film, taking on more serious roles and her love of British cinema

Laure Calamy certainly makes a jaunty entrance. She’s somewhere out of sight in the kitchen of her Paris flat, and all I can see on my laptop is a vividly coloured glass partition – a Mondrian pattern of rectangles in rich shades of red and orange. Then suddenly the French actor comes into view, greeting me with a big “All-ôôô!”, so perkily singsong that the English equivalent would have to be “Coo-eee!”

I like the panel, I tell her. “I found it in a little shop where I used to live,” she says. “I’m crazy about glassworks and those colours. I found this, et hop …!” – she bought it. You can imagine Calamy’s best-known character, Noémie Leclerc from the hit Netflix series Call My Agent!, buying something similar in a burst of enthusiasm: et hop! With her ebullient energy, fast, throaty delivery and her dress style today – green leopard-print top, big hoop earrings – you might easily assume that Calamy and her TV character are a very close match.

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