In his new film "Razzia" Nabil Ayouch probes with a lot of grace the cracks of contemporary Morocco. The city of Casablanca is undoubtedly its main actress ... the most contemporary, the most true, the most alive and the most elusive of Morocco, that the director films without makeup and without false modesty.

Casablanca is dirty, noisy, aggressive, she turns her back to the sea, she is disordered, but she is immeasurable wealth, I like to show it, this city, to make a character

With his side, five other characters linked between the past and the present by their resistance to the oppression of the rise of authoritarian Islamism, especially against women.

The film begins in the Atlas Mountains in the 80s, with the confrontation of a teacher who has to comply with the Arabization reforms throughout the country.

"We strip a population of its cultural diversity in favor of hegemonism. The humanities of the program have been removed (philosophy, sociology, etc.) for the benefit of Islamic classes and an entire educational system has been covered by a language called classical Arabic. As we have not trained the teachers, we bring back those from the Middle East and after a few years appear the satellite channels of the Middle East which do a lot of harm and reinforce a feeling of inculturation ... "

A society today in pain, that the loss of bearings "with a youth who does not know in which direction to go, who no longer loves and who no longer dreams", divides into two clans: tradition and modernity.

Nabil Ayouch films spaces, alternating enclosed space and open space, as social issues that are played in the street but also within the family. He closely frames his characters, neglects nothing, and makes almost palpable the mutation that takes place in each of them:
The desire to resist, to accept no more than their individual liberties, is violated by the religious rigorism that gangreans the country.

In particular Salima, beautiful and strong, embodied by Maryam Touzani (co-writer and revelation of the film) who proudly faces the inquisitive gaze of the "good-thinking".
In a street scene where she wears a tight dress, she shortens her skirt in response to the insults of a passer-by. Barely a few minutes after shooting this sequence, the actress is arrested by a man who threatens and orders him to go get dressed.

"My character has been nourished, reinforced by this experience. This incident gave me a lot of confidence in the character and the belief that we were really rooted in reality, "she explained at the film's press conference.

The real, Nabil Ayouche had already been confronted with the ban on his previous film Muched Love (about the lives of prostitutes in Morocco). The attacks, and the death threats, did not undermine the director's conviction:

Razzia is a film about individual freedoms and resistance. There is fighting to be fought, and now it is necessary to lead them.

What better than a movie to convey this message of resistance. The enemy to fight is lurking behind the rise of fundamentalism in Morocco, but also elsewhere, with the emergence of populism in Europe or puritanism in North America ...

Remember that women are always the first to be "in the line of sight" of this regression of individual freedoms. Those who in the affirmation of their freedom "threaten" all men attached to their domination.

Resist, yes, but quickly!

In theaters from March 14, Nabil Ayouch's Razzia with Maryam Touzani, Arieh Worthalter, Abdelilah Rachid