A ghostly search for traces, based on the 1965 U.S. embargo against “communist” real hair wigs from Asia. Is every wig inhabited by a ghost from the imperial past?
This film is about the haunting memories of Asia’s late-20th-century modernisation. The story departs from a 1965 United States embargo on the hair trade, known as the “Communist Hair Ban”. In every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past.
5 Moroccan boys live in a cave at the lighthouse in Melilla and dream of Europe. Away from their mothers, longing for one ship that will transfer them illegally to a better life.
The Moroccan boys Imad (15), Nourdine (17), Walid (18), Hamza (17) and Aziz (20) live in a cave under the lighthouse in Melilla. Every night they break into the harbour trying to climb onto the ships leaving for the Spanish mainland. In the shadow of the rocks, they and a hundred other kids have created their own micro-society: “Lord of the Flies” in reality – with their own hierarchies, chants and rules. To pass the time, they phone their mothers on video or film themselves being chased by the police. The film follows the gang of boys for 5 years. From their life in the caves to their successful escape attempts to Spain. They call themselves: Harragas – those who burn the passports, the borders, their lives.
The breasts are in place, the feathers are smoothed, off to the date! Her daughter does not comprehend the ritual of desire yet … Erotically crude, with pointed beaks in the conflicts.
People wonder about the disappearance of the moon. Meanwhile, a bull escapes from his herd and takes a poetic trip through the night – with a surprising finale.
A bull flees from his herd. The moon goes missing from the sky. The bull runs across this new moonless world, looking for its limit. Instead, he finds different people and their many endeavours, and in them, discovers their limitlessness. He learns of his own penchant for poetry and finds a way to transform his quest.
In search of memories of her childhood, Asmae El Moudir recreates her Casablanca neighbourhood as an elaborate miniature and in the process comes across a trauma of Moroccan history.
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. When her family refuses to answer her questions about the past, she hits on another solution: on a handmade replica recreating the Casablanca neighbourhood where she grew up, El Moudir 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's real to the surface.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.