Asmae El Moudir plays with multiple perspectives in her hybrid documentary The Mother of All Lies. Shot over the course of 10 years in Morocco, El Moudir questions her hushed family’s history through meticulously crafted reenactments. With the help of her father Mohamed, a former builder, tile layer, and overall craftsman, the director recreates her childhood neighborhood in miniature form. Figurines are substituted for relatives and neighbors while models stand in for apartment blocks. Through these dioramas and first-person interviews, El Moudir recreates several versions of the past in an effort to understand both her family and country’s history that have been lost due to fear and negligence, prompting us to question: how do we remember the past without proper proof or documentation?
The inciting event of The Mother of All Lies comes from a place of deep frustration. After 1981, the director’s grandmother Zahra, who is never actually named throughout the film, destroyed all family photos with the exception of a picture of Hassan II, the King of Morocco, whose portrait hung on the wall of their living room. Growing up, this meant that El Moudir had very little sense of the past. Her father would only tell one story amongst friends, about building the local football pitch with dreams of becoming a professional goalkeeper, while everyone else would remain mute. This silence was the work of her grandmother, who is known by neighbors as a “dictator” or as a “killjoy” by El Moudir, and feared by almost everyone. Known for eavesdropping on her neighbors, she often repeats the phrase “walls have ears.” El Moudir’s grandmother functions like Livia Soprano, wielding power despite her wrinkles and short stature. Sonically, she’s surrounded by a tambourine while on screen, making her appearance feel snakelike and untrustworthy. For most of her adult life, El Moudir’s grandmother has never been challenged by anyone, until now.
El Moudir is a persuasive filmmaker. Throughout most interviews and conversations, she inserts herself into the film, drawing out people’s personal anecdotes like a therapist, though some individuals are more forthcoming than others. In the film’s opening scene, El Moudir helps her grandmother fasten a hearing aid. Her grandmother claims the device doesn’t work, but we know this isn’t true when El Moudir whispers, “Why don’t you allow photographs, Grandma,” who encounters the question with vitriol. Unlike her silenced family members and neighbors, El Moudir is communicative. Throughout the film, she works with Abdallah, a neighbor her grandmother has clocked as not “normal.” Over time, it’s slowly revealed that Abdallah was tortured during the 1981 Moroccan riots; drawing hard on a cigarette, he finally reveals that his “life ended on that painful day of June 20, 1981.” Through reenactments, Abdallah tells his story. It’s one that has never been told.
Most of The Mother of All Lies takes place in an artist’s studio that El Moudir refers to as an atelier. Mohamed’s models fill the screen, but when the camera zooms out, we can see that they don’t actually take up much space. People are the film’s true focus, not the sound stage. Abdallah, Mohamed, Zahra, El Moudir’s mother Ouardia, and the family’s neighbor Zaid, who was imprisoned for 13 years after 1981 for protesting, become characters whose stories guide the film. No one is fictional, but there is a theatrical quality to their roles. Green and red lighting cast psychedelic shadows while close-ups of working hands and wrinkled faces intercept conversations that sometimes seem rehearsed. Despite their stylization, however, each character can be viewed as a microcosm of Moroccan present society: El Moudir’s grandmother represents the old guard, especially when she shouts things like “Long live the King!”; El Moudir’s parents are enablers, who mostly embrace stoic silence; Zaid and Abdallah chant “My rights are the blood that run through my veins, I won’t give them up even if they execute me” in opposition. El Moudir films all of this, but also demonstrates skill in guiding conversations as needed. She is perhaps the only person in the film concerned with the future. She needs people to communicate, so that she might form some sort of record of the past.
In the film’s third act, El Moudir shows us a picture. It’s the only surviving photograph of the 1981 riots. It’s black-and-white and grainy, but through close inspection we can see bodies littered throughout the foreground and background of its composition. Everyone in the film was affected by the riots of 1981, some worse than others. El Moudir reminds us that the “survivors were born, and the dead went missing,” and yet, If you search “1981 Moroccan riots” on Wikipedia, very little information is provided. The Mother of All Lies seeks to actively, evocatively counter this erasure. El Moudir uses her camera as a tool, excavating the past and providing viewers with a much-needed reality check.
DIRECTOR: Asmae El Moudir; DISTRIBUTOR: Outsider Pictures; IN THEATERS: September 6; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 36 min.
