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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Academy take action: why there should be an Oscar for best stunts

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The director of John Wick: Chapter 4 has revealed that he is in discussions with the Academy to officially recognise the power of action sequences – and it couldn’t happen quickly enough

You could ask a million different people what they want from the Oscars, and you’d get a million different replies. Some would want greater diversity, others for commercial movies to be better recognised. Some would want to see the entire ceremony scrapped altogether and replaced by a list of winners sent out via email, although that last one might just be me. Anyway, the point is that nobody – nobody on Earth – would want the Oscars to be any longer.

To watch the Oscars these days is to commit to slowly losing all feeling in your lower body. On and on they go, for hours and hours. All the awards. All the speeches. All the montages. All the bits where everyone assembled focuses their willpower to shut out the creeping death of theatrical film-making as a financially viable medium. It goes on a while, and at this stage only an absolute lunatic would want to start adding categories to an already overstuffed dance card.

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