Middle East Online – 'Marock' causes shock and awe in Morocco

Middle East Online
‘Marock’ causes shock and awe in Morocco

Filmmakers lash out at Leila Marrakchi’s controversial film about Muslim-Jew love story in Tangiers film festival.

By Saad Guerraoui – LONDON

Leila Marrakchi’s “Marock” is a movie not like any other movie Moroccans have seen or heard. The Moroccan film has caused uproar among the audience and critics in the eight Moroccan film festival held in Tangiers.

Many elites of Moroccan cinema were appalled by the story which touches Islamic values and questioned the filmmaker’s nationality.

Mohamed Asli, a film director, explained how Marrakchi had been blindly manipulated by the “Zionist ideology.”

“Neither the young lady (director) nor her film is Moroccan… and they have no place in national festival,” he lamented. “The government becomes accomplice of Imperialism and Zionism by allowing its screening.”

The film tells the story of a rich 17-year old Moroccan girl from a liberal Muslim family who falls in love with a handsome Jew from a rich family just before she graduated from high school.

Marrakchi said the title “illustrates a spoiled, wild and schizophrenic youth which adheres to western lifestyle but still attached to its traditions.”

The filmmaker unveiled a taboo in the Moroccan society. Her film simply reflects the real truth but which many would not dare talking about. Marock was filmed in Casablanca where you can come across a sexy girl dressed in a mini-skirt and another veiled from head to toe, and where you find the country’s trendiest night clubs and Islamic fundamentalism.

However, there was another cultural factor which angered the audience. The only conversations heard in Arabic were those of domestics, chauffeurs, and parking attendants. The filmmaker forgot the illiteracy level in Morocco where only a tiny minority is able to speak and understand French fluently.

Marock certainly caused a trauma in the festival, but raised many question marks that were forgotten in the Moroccan society where the wealthy teens are more and more rebellious against the country’s Islamic and cultural values.