Cinema
الحياة كفاح
Synopsis
Karim, a carpenter's son, leaves his village in the Rif for Casablanca, where he must, according to the production's official summary, “overcome, first to live, then to express himself”. Mohammed Bakrim places this departure in Chaouen and attributes it to a break with the father. A young musician, Karim meets in the big city Souad, a rich bourgeois woman whom he loves, and twists of fate and chance encounters follow one another, according to the codes of Egyptian melodrama to which the two critics link the film.
Context
The country had no national feature film to present at the film festival that the minister Ahmed Alaoui wished to open in Tangier in 1968, on the model of the one in Carthage, according to Mohammed Bakrim; Yabiladi confirms that the film was shot in a hurry for the first Mediterranean Film Festival. Two feature films were thus born, this one, in black and white, and Quand mûrissent les dattes, in colour. The cinematography is by Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi, the editing by Abdeslam Sefrioui, and the singer Abdelouhab Doukkali plays the lead opposite Leila Chenna. Zakya Daoud sees in it, according to Yabiladi, the first entirely Moroccan feature film.
Who it is for
A feature film shot on 35 mm, without colour, running 105 minutes according to the official sheet of its producer.
Prizes and reception
Poorly received: the magazine Lamalif panned it, according to Yabiladi, and the audience booed it at the Carthage Film Days.
Sources for this page 7
The pages consulted to check this page.