“World Documentaries Today” Film Screening and Director Q&A

The Mother of All Lies
Asmae El Moudir (2024)
Thursday, September 5, 2024 | 7:00 pm
Humanities Quadrangle (HQ)
Alice Cinema (L01)
Films at the Whitney

Join us for the first installment of Films at the Whitney’s Fall 2024 screening series, World Documentaries Today, featuring director Asmae El Moudir in person! 

Asmae El Moudir, THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES (2024, 97 min., Arabic with English subtitles)
Winner of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Best Director Award, 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 in fact her. She sets out to explore the past and its mysteries by creating a handmade replica of the Sebata district of Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up. There, she begins to interrogate the tales her mother, father, and grandmother tell about their home, their country, and the 1981 Casablanca Bread Riots. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. In this poetic and cathartic investigation of her neighborhood’s history, El Moudir begins to draw the truth to the surface.
 
World Documentaries Today celebrates new and cutting-edge nonfiction films that bring urgent global issues—from political disinformation to cultural repatriation—into sharp focus through innovative storytelling. 
 

Series curator: Lora Maslenitsyna, Ph.D. student in Film and Media Studies and Slavic Languages and Literatures