The Mother of All Lies review – pursuing the truth of Morocco’s brutal dictatorship years

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

Frederic Forrest obituary

Consummate character actor who came close to stardom in the 70s with roles in Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and The Rose

“He’d kill us if he got the chance.” Those words, spoken by a bespectacled, beige-suited young man (Frederic Forrest) as he wanders through Union Square in San Francisco with his lover (Cindy Williams), are secretly recorded by the surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) in The Conversation (1974). Their meaning, mulled over at length, becomes vital in unlocking the story’s mysteries. One of the key thrillers of its decade, Francis Ford Coppola’s film was also an eloquent expression of paranoia in a country reeling from Watergate.

Forrest, who has died aged 86, was the ideal actor to throw certainties into doubt. In The Conversation, he is bookish, furtive and opaque. The audience never becomes properly acquainted with him, though recordings of his voice and image are repeatedly offered up for our scrutiny so that the act of studying his expressions and intonations becomes central to experiencing the film. Without realising it, we channel a good deal of energy into deciphering his motives.

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