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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Can Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon prove there’s life beyond Star Wars for the space opera genre?

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Snyder’s epic-looking Netflix effort comes complete with lightsabers and exotic space princesses. Can it revive a neglected style of film-making?

For a genre that pretty much inspired the entire blockbuster era, space opera has become weirdly hard to get hold of beyond Star Wars. After the original trilogy’s barnstorming success in the late 70s for Lucasfilm, there were umpteen abortive attempts by other studios to grab themselves some of that good space fantasy dollar, but nobody really got anywhere useful. Disney’s appalling The Black Hole is barely remembered these days, while Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars is perhaps memorable only for giving a certain James Cameron an early break on special effects. There was even a James-Bond-in-space movie, Roger Moore’s Moonraker, although it hardly registers as one of 007’s most scintillating adventures.

Flash forward to the present day, and space opera seems to have become the preserve of the small screen, thanks to Disney+’s endlessly satisfying conveyor belt of Star Wars spin-offs and retreads. We are promised more movies set in a galaxy far, far away, but there are no definitive start dates for production and certainly no mooted release dates. Ever since 2019’s incredibly disappointing, trilogy-killing The Rise of Skywalker, the only way to watch space opera at the multiplex has been to catch the latest Guardians of the Galaxy episode or sign up for retro screenings of the old classics.

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