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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Power review – damning documentary traces the history of US policing

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Sundance film festival: Yance Ford’s followup to Oscar nominated documentary Strong Island is a visually elegant, if a little dry, look at a problematic instituion

Power, documentarian Yance Ford’s clinical inquiry into US policing, isn’t trafficking in new information. The 86-minute project billed as an “essay-film”, which premiered at Sundance and will stream on Netflix later this year, has clear eyes on the past, synthesizing the work of several academics with a robust archival record to examine the origins, structure and impact of police power in the United States.

That doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary; the film makes cogent, sweeping sense of the record for perhaps the most illuminative, swift and damning case against the institution of policing – the real fourth estate, as one subject puts it – of the many investigations conducted in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. But there’s a dryness to its procedure. Though more visually elegant and poetic (almost to a fault, owing to Ford’s at times ponderous narration) than a Netflix Explained entry, Power basically has the same function as a nonfiction explainer. Perhaps owing to its ample use of academics to supply the exclamation points and through-lines to a truly remarkable collage of archival footage, the film has the feel of a very deluxe college lecture. (A visual metaphor linking policing power to an atomic bomb, while mesmerizing to look at, never fully lands.)

Power is screening at the Sundance film festival and will be released on Netflix later this year

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