Filmmaker Asmae El Moudir, making her feature directorial drama, starts her non-fiction film “The Mother Of All Lies” as a modest family chronicle—an elevated home video of sorts. It is soon clear, though, that she has much more on her mind because the actual subject of her inquiry is the collective amnesia around a seminal event that changed Morocco forever, the 1981 Casablanca bread riots. A shattering moment in history that tore apart families and communities, it resulted in the massacre of over 600 civilians—erased from history books it seems. El Moudir, at long last, demands a reckoning, that will uncover old wounds, but also provide closure.
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Growing up in a modest neighborhood in Morocco, El Moudir always had a gaping hole in her childhood— she did not have any pictures of herself before the age of 12. Her grandmother banned any pictures considering them haram or forbidden by religion. A greater hole still, was the forgotten event that seemed to haunt all adults around her. Neighbors had disappeared but were never spoken of again. A buried trauma percolated into her own identity, a prison she needed to escape from, and a past she needed to confront. 
The making of “The Mother Of All Lies” is a remarkable story in its own right. A decade in the works, El Moudir started to construct a picture of what transpired in 1981 but without the benefit of any documentation, records, or photographs at her disposal. History had been scrubbed clean it seems. It needs to be said though that El Moudir’s project was always meant to be an artistic reckoning with the truth and not a journalistic exercise. She wasn’t looking to compile testimony in the manner of say, Claude Lanzmann “Shoah,” but looking to filter the events solely from the perspective of her family—as they had experienced it. Her inability to film at the actual locations or leverage any existing archival footage led to her masterstroke—recreating the past through miniatures.
El Moudir’s father, a builder, had never constructed miniatures before, yet over 8 months, he created a scale replica of the neighborhood where the events played out—including the street square where protestors were shot down, the football field where the bodies were buried, and the jail cells where the political prisoners were held and tortured. Populating these scenes are clay dolls, standing in for El Moudir’s family and her neighbors. The extraordinary verisimilitude and detail in these hand-crafted buildings and dolls lend potency and immediacy to the scenes as we experience them almost as live-action footage. There is no stop-motion animation involved, El Moudir conveys what is happening through terrific sound design and by manually moving around the dolls. 
Using miniatures to tell a story of humanitarian crimes isn’t exactly a novel idea, Rithy Panh’s “The Missing Picture” already did that to tremendous acclaim. El Moudir distinguishes her film by injecting herself into film, we see her and hear her throughout, and watch as she and her family create the miniatures and discuss what happened. The most powerful moment in the film is when her neighbor Abdallah Ez Zouid torturously recounts his imprisonment and abuse in graphic detail—in a lengthy unbroken take. The confession seems to physically contort his body, as he splays down on the ground, groaning under the burden of the trauma he had buried inside himself.
The title “The Mother Of All Lies” refers to almost an inverse Mandela effect in Morocco and El Moudir’s family. It isn’t so much that an event that never happened is remembered by the population, but an event that happened seems to have been forgotten via a regime of suppression. It also superficially refers to El Moudir’s grandmother who plays an antagonistic role in the film in the sense, that she is the standard bearer for those who would rather forget and El Moudir would rather remember and this brings them into conflict.
“The Mother Of All Lies” comes decked with awards and acclaim. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Best Director Prize and shared the overall festival-wide Best Documentary Prize with the Oscar-nominated “Four Daughters”. El Moudir was looking to compete for the same prize and even contend in Best International Film where it was short-listed as Morocco’s entry, but did not receive a nomination. It is now premiering at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival looking to expand its footprint and acquire a US distributor. A smart outlet could definitely pick it up as discerning audiences might be interested in the historical events they are unfamiliar with as well as the artful portrait of El Moudir’s family. [B]
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