Khaberni - The Cinema Committee at the Abdul Hameed Shuman Foundation will be screening, tomorrow Tuesday at 6:30 PM, the Moroccan film "Majid" directed by Naseem Abbasi, at the cinema hall in the foundation's headquarters in Jabal Amman.
The plot of the film starts with a photograph where we see a man and a woman sitting side by side. The young boy Majid gazes at the photo sadly, as the man and woman’s faces in the picture have been burned away. The man and woman are Majid's parents who passed away when he was a small child. As he grows older, his concern becomes learning about his parents' faces, even if only by imagining them from their photo. Majid gets the chance to fulfill his dream when his older brother Idris, who lives with and takes care of him, tells him that there might be photos of their parents at the house of a family of old friends living in Casablanca, far from their town. Majid embarks on a journey filled with difficulties in hopes of finding the family of his parents' friends and hopefully the longed-for photo.
From this creative idea, the film's events begin, but the film does not stop there; it serves as an entry point to explore the reality of poor children in Morocco, many of whom are forced to work in the streets to make a living through various menial jobs. This reality is depicted by the director in detailed and moving honesty. Thus, we see Majid sometimes working as a seller of used religious books, and as a shoeshiner in the town's streets for pedestrians and those sitting outside popular cafés; later, after meeting a boy his age named "Al Arabi" who sells cigarettes by the piece to passersby, he joins him in his cigarette-selling venture. The relationship between Majid and Al Arabi adds a quality dimension that contributes to revealing much about the tragedies faced by such children in their daily lives of violence, humiliation, oppression, and persecution.
In addition to the story of the two children Majid and his friend Al Arabi, the script introduces us to the story of Idris, Majid's older brother, a factory worker who dreams of moving to Europe in search of work.
The film is filled with many emotionally impactful scenes, one of the most significant being a scene where we see Majid walking with his shoeshine box and encountering his brother sitting with a friend in front of a café sidewalk; the friend calls "Majid" to shine his shoes, and after Majid completes his task, the man asks him to shine Idris's shoes as well. The gazes of the two brothers, who acted like strangers, meet, confused by the situation, but the friend insists.
The film has won over ten awards at international film festivals. Some of these awards were given for the direction and for the highly polished screenplay, and some were awarded to the boy Ibrahim al-Baqqali in the role of Majid.
It is to the credit of the film "Majid" that it is one of the very rare Arabic films offering a starring role to two children who perform their challenging roles with skill and conviction, similar to the Moroccan film "Ali Zaoua" and the Egyptian film "Excuse My French".
It is worth mentioning that the director Naseem Abbasi studied film in England, has produced and directed several short films in both Britain and Morocco, and his films have been well received at the Film Festival for British and Foreign Films. He directed his first English-language film titled "Winter Sun is a Lie," which was awarded Best Feature Film at the New Delhi International Film Festival in 2005, and he wrote and directed a television film titled "Without Borders" starring the Moroccan actress Alia Al Rakab, which achieved high viewership when it was shown on the second channel in 2008, recording a viewership of 4 million, according to statistics from the "Maroc Metrie" Foundation.
