Morocco, from the past to the present. Five people who are connected to each other – Abdallah, Salima, Joe, Hakim, and Inès – without realizing it. Different faces, different struggles, but one same breath. One city, Casablanca as a fragment of reality, as the myth of a film entirely shot in Hollywood studios, which reality has come back to claim.
Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in the hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.
Reda, summoned to accompany his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca, complies reluctantly - as he preparing for his baccalaureat and, even more important, has a secret love relationship. The trip across Europe in a broken-down car is also the departure of his father: upon arrival in Mecca, both Reda and his father are not the characters they were at the start of the movie. Avoiding the hackneyed theme of the return to the homeland, the film uses the departure to renew a connection between two generation.
A Moroccan-Norwegian co-production about the dark side of Casablanca (Casanegra). In a country where good virtues are the norm in public, Casanegra shows the vices: domestic violence, alcohol abuse and drug abuse. Meet Karim and Adil and their struggle in the big city.
In the aftermath of the Algerian War, a young Algerian woman reaches a strange reconciliation with the Senegalese officer who raped and impregnated her.
Hamid is a former volunteer who participated in the 1982 Lebanon War and returns from there with disappointment. He becomes homeless in the city of Casablanca. He resorts to theft and addiction to combat his homelessness and physical disability. His only dream in life is to bring his symphony into existence, so he asks the help from his homeless friends for that.
1981, Morocco. A village in the Atlas mountains. A city in the distance. A child. A family facing its destiny.
In the northeast of contemporary Morocco, Zeinab, a young wife watches her husband leave the country to go underground the day after their wedding. Zeinab is expecting a child. While she is waiting for her husband to return she lulls the foetus to sleep. Time goes by and the husband does not come back.
Amin is a teenage boy who lives with his two sisters, Kenza and Saida, in Tangier. Tragedy strikes when Saida is raped by the son of the man Kenza works for as a maid. The father threatens the girl not to press any charges against his son since he is running for elections.
The 40-year-old Omrane is in charge to find maid placements in Tunis for the girls from his village. But the most rebel of the girls has escaped and he has to look for her to get her back in the right path. The girl refuses to lose the freedom she just obtained. For her part, the young Fedlah who was enthusiastic by going to town quickly discovers a world where childhood doesn't belong to.
