THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES

Asmae El Moudir

Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt

- 2023

Estreno nacional

Young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn’t even her. She decides to explore the past and its mysteries by creating a handmade replica of the Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up. There, she begins to interrogate the tales her mother, father and grandmother tell about their home and their country. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what is real to the surface.

Asmae El Moudir

She is a Moroccan film director, screenwriter and producer born in 1990 in Salé. She studied at La Fémis in Paris and holds a master’s degree in production from the Superior Institute of Information and Communication in Rabat and a bachelor’s degree in documentary cinema from the Abdelmalek Essaâdi University in Tetouan. She also graduated in 2010 from the ISCA. After making a number of short films, like ‘The Colours of Silence’ (2012), ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ (2013) or ‘Rough Cut’ (2015), in 2020 she completed the mid-length documentary ‘The Postcard’. ‘The Mother of All Lies’, her first feature film, won the awards for best director at Un Certain Regard and the Golden Eye for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will represent Morocco in the race for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film.