Khaberni - The Cinema Committee at Abdel Hamid Shoman Foundation presents tomorrow, Tuesday, the Moroccan film "White Lies" by director Asmaa El Mady, at exactly six thirty in the evening at the cinema hall at the foundation's headquarters in Jabal Amman.
In "White Lies" we begin with the director's journey of the film that starts at a purely personal moment; it is the moment when director Asmaa El Mady discovers that the only blurry picture she thought was from her childhood is actually not hers. This little white lie that the family told to their daughter Asmaa, will become an entrance to a maze of repressed memories, family secrets, and a private history, which will intersect with a significant and historical event, namely the bread uprising (events of June 20, 1981) in Casablanca, where her family lived, and where hundreds of innocent citizens fell victim to these events. This incident will be subjected to questioning, as the director opens up the film to further questions needing answers; why does her grandmother hate taking pictures? Why were no pictures taken of her until she was twelve years old, when she went alone to the studio to have her picture taken? And what does it mean for the grandmother to dominate the family? Who is Fatima? And how did she die?
Thus a set of questions related to the director's childhood and a cinematic camera were the initial spark for a cinematic confrontation with the family, with memory, and the past and homeland, in search of the unspoken truth. In this confrontation and search, two axes intersect: the personal axis which involves searching for a personal truth when all fundamental memories are “doubted,” represented by the director and her family -starting from an unclear picture- and the second axis is the public axis that historically deals with a difficult period in Morocco's history.
"White Lies" is the first feature-length documentary by Moroccan director Asmaa El Mady, and in fact, the boundaries of documentary and fiction overlap in this film. With the investigative skill she gained from the profession of journalism, she adopted a different approach to revisiting the past; instead of relying on written documents, she used visual materials and oral history documentation to help her recreate the past innovatively and symbolically using miniature models representing the home and the street where the events occurred, and depicting prisons, and she used carved dolls as a symbol for all the characters involved in the work (the father, mother, grandmother, various family members, and neighbors...), created by her and her father, to make these models and dolls a vivid theater questioning the past and embodying the emotions and memories carried by Asmaa El Mady’s family.
Asmaa El Mady's voice as a narrator comments on the events, and her camera lens are special tools in investigating the truth. The film is distinguished by a beautiful visual style, with a clear focus on the smallest details, and a carefully employed lighting design. The importance of using visual material is no less significant than the use of audio material; such as sound effects and songs by "Nass El Ghiwane," which were used to fit the time period the film addresses, and to reflect the pulse of the rebellious streets.
It is worth mentioning that in 2023, the film "White Lies" won the directing award at the (A Certain Look) competition, presented by one of the most important international film festivals, the Cannes Festival, and the film was also selected to represent Morocco in the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for the year 2024.
