The setting for British-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa’s latest feature may be radically different from the kitchen sink spaces of his debut drama Lynn + Lucy but it carries with it further contemplation of class structures and the way that people’s closest relationships can often prove to be the most toxic.
Also, as with his first film - which saw him street cast Roxanne Scrimshaw in one of the title roles - he has looked to non-professionals this time around. The charismatic Aïcha Tebbae proves to be a real discovery in the role of Fatima-Zahra, a mother who has a complex relationship with her teenage son Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji). The pair carry their lives around with them in a collection of large bags, moving just another part of their established routine and one triggered, at the start of the film, by an attempt by her to get money for the.
Also, as with his first film - which saw him street cast Roxanne Scrimshaw in one of the title roles - he has looked to non-professionals this time around. The charismatic Aïcha Tebbae proves to be a real discovery in the role of Fatima-Zahra, a mother who has a complex relationship with her teenage son Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji). The pair carry their lives around with them in a collection of large bags, moving just another part of their established routine and one triggered, at the start of the film, by an attempt by her to get money for the.
- 7/8/2023
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
In the little-remembered 1950 noir “The Damned Don’t Cry,” Joan Crawford plays a Texan housewife whose grief for her late son spurs her to make a new life for herself in the urban underworld. Fyzal Boulifa’s exquisite new film of the same title is named expressly for that Crawford vehicle, but is neither a remake nor a direct homage. Rather, it remixes the narrative components of that film and others of its ilk into the kind of new-school-old-school heart-tugger — one might say tearjerker if its characters weren’t, true to its title, stoically dry-eyed throughout — that might have been designed for the shoulder-padded diva were she alive in 2022 and, perhaps more crucially, of Moroccan heritage.
Charting the turbulent relationship between a single mother and her teenage son on the destitute fringes of Tangier society, the second feature from BAFTA-nominated British-Moroccan filmmaker Boulifa sees him shifting focus to his North African...
Charting the turbulent relationship between a single mother and her teenage son on the destitute fringes of Tangier society, the second feature from BAFTA-nominated British-Moroccan filmmaker Boulifa sees him shifting focus to his North African...
- 9/17/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
In Morocco, homosexuality is banned and just one in five citizens find gayness “acceptable,” at least according to a 2019 poll. An Elton John concert twelve years ago broke the law, but was personally approved by Morocco’s king. Still, Grindr thrives, and third-largest city, Tangier, has a decades-long tradition as a haven for LGBT+ culture in North Africa.
Morocco thus makes a fitting setting for British sophomore director Fyzal Boulifa’s challenging melodrama “The Damned Don’t Cry,” a loose remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Mamma Roma,” which was nominated for the Golden Lion sixty Venice Film Festivals ago. But selectors in this year’s Giornate Degli Autori sidebar program did not place Boulifa’s film out of sentimentality alone. “The Damned Don’t Cry” is excellent, asking tough questions about society and morality without easy answers or neat conclusions. Non-actors populate the cast, performing terrifically, in one of many nods...
Morocco thus makes a fitting setting for British sophomore director Fyzal Boulifa’s challenging melodrama “The Damned Don’t Cry,” a loose remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Mamma Roma,” which was nominated for the Golden Lion sixty Venice Film Festivals ago. But selectors in this year’s Giornate Degli Autori sidebar program did not place Boulifa’s film out of sentimentality alone. “The Damned Don’t Cry” is excellent, asking tough questions about society and morality without easy answers or neat conclusions. Non-actors populate the cast, performing terrifically, in one of many nods...
- 9/8/2022
- by Adam Solomons
- Indiewire
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