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CANNES 2021 Competition

Review: Casablanca Beats

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- CANNES 2021: Nabil Ayouch has made an excellent tale that is both a love affair with hip hop and a look at how the Moroccan youth is challenging orthodox views in the digital age

Review: Casablanca Beats

Casablanca Beats [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is the first Moroccan film to be selected in the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival since Abdelaziz Ramdani's Âmes et rythmes in 1962. The story is set in Sidi Moumen, a place made infamous in 2003 after a series of suicide bombings in the city claimed 33 lives. It's where director Nabil Ayouch shot his 2012 breakthrough film, Horses of God [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nabil Ayouch
film profile
]
. The news that Ayouch is now vying for the Palme d'Or has been better received in his home country than when Cannes played his 2015 film Much Loved [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, which, with its story of prostitution and nude scenes, was banned in his home country.

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Casablanca Beats is perhaps even more critical of Moroccan society, but uses the power of words and music in hip hop to discuss the issues facing young people in Casablanca. It's a state-of-the-nation piece through music. In some ways, it can be described as the Moroccan Eight Mile, as music becomes a way of escape for the young people of the district, but this comparison would be doing the political thrust of the excellent Casablanca Beats a disservice.

The fictional film takes place at a real-life cultural centre called Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen. It's where, one day in 2014, a rapper called Anas Basbousi asked to build a programme called the Positive School of Hip Hop. In Casablanca Beats, art mirrors life, as Anas (playing himself) arrives at the school and announces that there will be lessons in Hip Hop. In lesson one, he explains the importance of hip hop in bringing about change in America. As he tells the story of the musical genre, he describes how it started in the projects in the Bronx, New York, in order to express political discontentment and give a voice to the disenfranchised. Soon after, it powerfully entered the American zeitgeist and changed the music scene and the political makeup of the country, leading to the election of President Barack Obama.

He encourages the class to start writing about their experiences. This allows the film to get a glimpse of the lives of the kids, and these moments do feel a little clichéd at first – the parents who don't want their child to partake in the class, the young man who sides with the Imam, believing that nothing good can come of performing, and the kids who get inspired – however, Ayoub keeps the drama and these plot devices serving as support mechanisms for the central thrust of the movie, which is a discussion on Islam and growing up in a society that is between two worlds, the past and the present. Can tradition survive globalisation and the internet? What role does culture have in bringing about change? The rapport between teacher and students is excellent, as is the music, which Anas has written. The cinematography by Amine Messadi and Virginie Surdej is also outstanding, making the area in Casablanca seem like it's in the Paris suburbs, thus reinforcing the idea that the world is getting smaller in the digital age, and more homogeneous, too, for good or for bad. The ending is superb, avoiding many of the clichés that beset films of this ilk, suggesting that change is in motion.

Casablanca Beats was produced by France’s Les Films du Noveau Monde and Unité, and Morocco’s Ali n’ Productions. Its international sales are in the hands of Wild Bunch International.

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