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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‘I’m not a saint’: Abel Ferrara on his wild career, rehab and nightclubbing with Donald Trump

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The last time our writer interviewed him, the drugged up director dozed off then asked for coke. Now sober, he reflects on #MeToo, Italian fascism and his fight for the final cut

The last time I met Abel Ferrara, he dozed off in the middle of our interview then woke up and asked me to score him some coke. It was 1996, and he was in the UK promoting his gangster drama The Funeral – which the actor Vincent Gallo alleged Ferrara had been too blitzed on crack to direct properly – and his vampire horror The Addiction. He was on a roll, his reputation fortified by King of New York, starring Christopher Walken as a flamboyant crime boss, and the gruelling Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel as a bent junkie cop. Ferrara was the scuzzball Scorsese: no matter how celebrated he became, he never shed the patina of grime from his early days as the star and director of porn film The Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy and the infamous “video nasty” The Driller Killer.

“You were the guy I fell asleep with?” he gasps now from his bright, high-ceilinged living room in Rome. He is calling via Zoom, his laptop resting on a shelf so he can pace around as he speaks, drinking from a bottle of San Pellegrino that he clutches by the neck. “You’re the guy? I’m sorry, man! Really, really.” Then he switches tack. “You let me down! You were 24, living in London, and you didn’t know where to score?” He shakes his head in disbelief. “All right. So where could we get some now?” A sandpapery cackle fills the air as he rocks on his heels. His hunched posture and jutting jaw make him the spit of the cartoon dog Muttley. He laughs like him, too.

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