I enjoyed Razzia and found it a thought-provoking as well as entertaining film. The director Nabil Ayouch thought that its Toronto screenings went well and the film has been selected as Morocco’s Oscar entry in 2018 (not without some controversy). It will be released in Morocco, France and presumably other francophone countries early in 2018. It’s a shame that the director wasn’t at this London screening as he sounds an interesting character.
It’s a long time since I’ve been to Morocco but I remember thinking that it was a country which could explode, simply because of the lack of employment possibilities for the growing population of young people. The film’s title refers to the disturbances on the streets of Casablanca mainly by youths in 2012-13. I think ‘razzia‘ has the connotation of ‘raid’ in the Maghreb. (Researching the title I discovered an interesting polar, Razzia sur la chnouf (France 1955) starring Gabin and Ventura.) The narrative actually begins in a village in the Atlas mountains where a charismatic school teacher becomes friendly with a young widow whose son attends the school. The villagers gossip about the couple’s relationship but the children adore the teacher. This is 1983 and the progressive teacher comes to the notice of the authorities introducing educational ‘reforms’. Soon he is ousted when he refuses to shift to rote learning in Arabic instead of his more Socratic teaching in the local Berber language. He sets off for Casablanca and is barely seen again in the narrative which then moves forward to life in Casablanca some 30 years later. We do see the woman from the mountains again, and her son Yto, now a man of around forty working in a restaurant. The restaurateur, Joe (Arieh Worthalter) is Jewish and he will become another of the main characters whose lives in the city we will explore.
There are three other central characters who are not directly connected to the four already mentioned. One is Hakim (Abdelilah Rachid), a young man who is attempting to become a pop singer following the example of his idol Freddie Mercury. The second is Salima (Maryam Touzani, the co-writer on the film), a woman who has become ‘westernised’ and has started to be criticised for the clothes she wears and the way she presents herself. She is in a rather dismal relationship with a businessman who doesn’t respect her freedom. Finally, and introduced only in the last part of the film, is Inès (Dounia Binebine) a young middle-class girl, a 15 year-old who is left to her own devices by her parents and who is determined to lose her virginity.
These characters are connected only loosely in most cases, though in some ways the restaurant provides a kind of focal point. Don’t expect a single linear narrative. I think Joe and Salima have the most developed stories/scenarios but all the characters contribute something. Think of the film more as a kind of illustrated essay about what is happening in Casablanca. Most audiences will also home in on the symbolic or metaphorical use of the film Casablanca (US 1942). The Yto is proud of the film, imagining it to have been shot in ‘his’ city and his boss doesn’t know whether to break it to him that the film was entirely shot on a Hollywood sound stage. On the same level of symbolism, we are also offered a similar shot at the beginning and end of the film – a traditional high-backed chair is placed at a full-length open window looking out onto an indistinct vista. Here is a society that seemingly doesn’t know where it is going. The young are angry, the unemployed attack the rich, the Islamists turn against the secularists, minorities like gay men and women or the Jewish community struggle to feel secure. Yet Casablanca is a vibrant city with a long history and rich culture and the film appears to be a cry of pain about the lack of direction and the indifference towards inequalities.
I fear that Razzia won’t get a UK release (I can’t remember the last Maghrebi film I saw on release), but perhaps because this is a French co-production handled by Unifrance we’ll have a slightly better than usual chance of seeing it. Nabil Ayouch is a controversial director and here he does seem to be offering a more complex view of his country than the two usual images we have in the UK of either tourism/music/food or young migrants crossing over to Europe. The music in the film, which looks very good, is very good but there is so much going on I would need more viewings to take it all in. I enjoyed all the performances. Here’s the 33 second teaser – enjoy.
The Case for Global Film 