Film Days of the Mediterranean: KADIB ABYAD – THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES

38th Film Days of the Mediterranean 22.1. – 2.2.2025 Karlstorkino, Marlene-Dietrich-Platz 3, 69126 Heidelberg, admission €10, reduced €7.50, members Medienforum €6, advance ticket sales online: www.filmtage-mittelmeer.de or at the Karlstorkino (one hour before the first screening until the last film) or at the Montpellier-Haus (during opening hours). The young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photo from her childhood and why the girl in the picture is not herself. She decides to explore the past and its secrets by recreating the Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up by hand. There, she begins to question the stories her mother, father and grandmother tell her about their home and their country. Slowly, she begins to unravel the layers of deception and deliberate forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to bear, but in this sometimes surreal documentary, El Moudir begins to bring the real to the surface.

Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar 2023

Director: Asmae El Moudir

Documentary film

96 min. | Arabic. OmeU

Asmae El Moudir (*1990 in Salé) is a Moroccan film director, screenwriter and producer. She studied at La Fémis in Paris and completed a bachelor’s degree in documentary film in Tétouan, a master’s degree in production in Rabat and a degree in film studies at the Moroccan Film Academy (ISCA). She won the L’oeil d’or documentary award in Cannes for THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES and was named Best Director in the Un Certain Regard section.