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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Haunted Mansion review – Disney theme-park chiller is joyless Halloween merch

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Lakeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson and Jamie Lee Curtis cannot save this laborious story of a creepy old dwelling and the awful Hatbox Ghost

There’s scope for a genuinely disturbing and subversive horror set in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, the attraction which first opened at the original theme park in Anaheim in California in 1969, with cloned versions appearing at the Magic Kingdom in Florida in 1971 and Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. There’s also scope for a properly funny, amiably creepy Goosebumps-type family comedy based on it. But this tiresome, convoluted piece of corporate IP product isn’t it; like the 2003 film version with Eddie Murphy, it feels cynical – though I must admit I have never seen the Muppets Haunted Mansion special.

This new attempt to cross-monetise the tourist walkthrough is laborious and joyless while the throwaway funny lines, which do exist, only serve in the end to remind you how clunky it really is overall. Writer Katie Dippold has worked on funny movies and TV shows such as Parks and Recreation and Ghostbusters, but this isn’t her A-game.

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