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 Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse! review – brilliantly weird Estonian stop-motion

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This animated combination of cynicism and grotesquerie has as much energy as Aardman and double the WTF quotient

The only fitting comparison for this deranged Estonian stop-motion animation is if Shaun the Sheep had somehow been infected with a terminal case of BSE. The human characters are ugly lumpen golems, all the better to suggest rural backwardness; milk enjoys the same almost-ontological status here as Malkovichness in Being John Malkovich; the film has an unhealthy anal fixation that at one point expresses itself in a giant bear, irritated by a heavy-metal guitarist in his colon, who farts out an entire forestful of animals. In short, it’s brilliant.

City brats Priidik (voiced by co-director Mikk Mägi), Aino (co-director Oskar Lehemaa) and Mart (Mägi) are sent to stay with their grandfather (Mägi), who to their scorn is always doing “barn things”. The old fella prides himself on his way with an udder; he starts to rid them of their urban prissiness with a few squirts of yoghurty lactate. But when his prize cow escapes, one-time milking champion Old Milker (Jan Uuspõld) turns up to alert them of the danger: relieve that udder within 24 hours, or risk unleashing “lactopalypse”.

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