Director

Nabil Ayouch

Morocco, France | 2021 | 101 min | Arabic

• Producer Nabil Ayouch, Amine Benjelloun, Bruno Nahon, Alexandra Henochsberg
• Production Company Ali N’ Productions, Les Films du Noveau Monde, Unite de Production
• Screenplay Nabil Ayouch, Maryam Touzani
• Cinematography Virginie Surdej, Amine Messadi
• Editing Marie-Helene Dozo, Yassir Hamani, Julia Gregory
• Sound Samuel Aichoun, Said Radi, Nassim El Mounabbih
• Cast Anas Basbousi, Ismail Adouab, Meriem Nekkach, Nouhaila Arif
• Contacts

  Wild Bunch International smichel@wildbunch.eu Middle East Distributor MC Distribution festivals@mcdistribution.me
  

About the Film

An empowering and vibrant musical brimming with energy and optimism, director Nabil Ayouch’s film is set against the backdrop of Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen, a cultural center that the director co-founded, with its story featuring young performers who were real-life students in the hip-hop program, The Positive School of Hip Hop, which gives Casablanca Beats a deep-rooted sense of honesty as it blurs documentary and fiction.

The film – the first Moroccan film to be screened as part of Cannes Film Festival’s main – features Anan Basbousi’s Anas, the founder of the hip-hop program at an arts center in the shantytown of Sidi Moumen. He is a charismatic and talented teacher, but rather than being the film’s core, he takes a backseat as the storylines focus on his students, who show their hip-hop skills.

But these youngsters grow into their characters and the film, which provides an engrossing platform for them to debate and discuss vital issues. The debate of whether sexual harassment, religion, and censorship should form a part of rap is important and the film offers a stage for a youthful look at some of contemporary Morocco’s issues. The Casablanca streets as well the art center’s classrooms provide the stage for a sprawling story of youthful empowerment.

As Wendy Ide wrote in ScreenDaily: ”Self-expression finds many channels – one teenage boy has a soulful voice and an improvisation talent; another kid is a proficient beatboxer; a fierce girl raps with the confidence of a performer twice her age. But perhaps the most thrilling are the dance sequences that spill into the streets and narrow alleyways of Sidi Moumen – defiant and uninhibited, street dance is harnessed by young women to claim their space in a society that still tends to dictate how they’re seen and heard”.

Mark Adams