Mother of All Lies

Mother of All Lies / Kadib abyad 
Asmae El Moudir, Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, 2023, 96’

Buried history, tangled in a web of lies, comes to life in this precise reconstruction of painful events for Morocco and the author’s family.

Young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn’t even her. She decides to explore the past and its mysteries by creating a handmade replica of the Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up. There, she begins to interrogate the tales her mother, father and grandmother tell about their home and their country. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what is real to the surface. 

“At the time I was twelve years old. My friend Raja was showing me her holiday photos from Tangiers when I realized that I had no pictures of myself as a child. But I was fascinated by the imagery that overflowed from my friend’s photo album. I liked to get lost in these albums and tell myself all kinds of romanticized stories. But when I asked my mother for my own childhood pictures, the only one she finally gave me was the photo of another little girl. 

This lie, a sensitive memory from my teenage years, was my first big conflict with my mother. After numerous fights, she finally revealed her secret to me. My grandmother—the figure of authority and head of the family, always refused any human representation inside the house, pretexting that it was forbidden by our religion. In truth, the reason for her rejection of photos ran deeper and was much more personal and painful as I discovered through the filming.” – Asmae El Moudir