This fascinating non-fiction film — winner of the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes — unearths powerful revelations after decades of silence, denial and deceit. As her parents and her formidable grandmother prepare to leave the Casablanca home they have lived in for decades, filmmaker Asmae El Moudir takes the opportunity to probe the past. She’s never understood why her mother only has one photograph of her daughter, for instance; in fact she’s not even convinced the girl in the photo is really her. Constructing a scaled reproduction of the street she remembers from her childhood in a film studio with the help of her father (a builder), El Moudir interrogates family and neighbours not only about the mysterious gaps in her own story, but the gaping silence around the 1981 Bread Riot massacre in which hundreds of civilians were killed — including Fatima, a child much like Asmae, who lived on the same block.
Best Director, Un Certain Regard; Golden Eye Best Documentary Award, Cannes 2023
A sly, often playful but ultimately moving study of community, generational anguish and atrocities covered up by the state that blends documentary technique with originality and polished storytelling skill.
Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter
Community Partner
Morocco/Qatar/Saudi Arabia/Egypt
2023
Spectrum
In Moroccan Arabic with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Asmae El Moudir
Screenwriter
Asmae El Moudir
Cinematography
Hatem Nechi
Editor
Asmae El Moudir
Production Design
Mohamed El Moudir
Original Music
Nass El Ghiwane
Director
Asmae El Moudir
Asmae El Moudir (born in 1990 in Salé) is a Moroccan film director, screenwriter and producer. Asmae has directed documentaries for SNRT, Al Jazeera Documentary, BBC and Al Araby TV. After making a number of short films, Asmae completed the mid-length documentary The Postcard in 2020. The Mother of all Lies is her first feature film.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Wind Will Carry Us
Kiarostami's dry comic masterpiece follows a Tehrani film team's thwarted attempts to document a traditional Kurdish funeral... Trouble being, there's no one to bury, and, worse, virtually no cell service...
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
American Doctor
One of the most powerful documentaries of the year, this puts us smack in the open wound that is Gaza, filtered through the eyes of three American surgeons (of Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian backgrounds) compelled to do their utmost to alleviate harm.
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is an assassin, but he's also an existential loner who adheres to his personal code. Despite the thriller trappings, this is really a lampoon of that genre, and a melancholy reverie for the cultural melting pot we call home.
Franz
Veteran Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland takes the bull by the horns to craft a Kafka biopic that's Kafkaesque and then some, artfully layering scenes from Kafka's life and works along with ironic present-day footage for a truly surreal counterpoint.
