I finally found a version of this film that was not dubbed into French! Over the years I have downloaded, rented and started watching it but gave up as the language was not the original Darija.
I watched the film with a sense of mounting horror and despair. There was not a moment of fat in this feature that told the story of various youths and their families' lives in the sprawling slum of Sidi Moumen. The shantytown had been allowed to exist and enlarge during "Les Années de Plomb" (the years of lead) under the careless watch of King Hassan ll. There is no way out apart from crime, prostitution or marriage to a rich person if one is good looking.
We see the lives of the protagonists from childhood through to the atrocities and how they are twisted and formed by the utter hopelessness of their situation. The local Mafias act on behalf of the cops until the latter decide an arrest is needed, then someone is casually thrown in jail. One of these is Hamid, rough elder brother of Tarek who is ensnared by radical Islam in the klink. Unfolding events trap others too, including Tarek and his friends.
There is a theme throughout the film of hidden homosexuality. Nabil is raped as a preteen and is Tarek's lover later when they are teens despite the latter being in love with Ghislaine, a local beauty. The repair shop's boss tries it on with Nabil too and this is the beginning of the lads' descent into fundamentalism. It's quite subtly done in the film. This is Morocco after all and such things are not spoken about.
The radicalisers are grotesquely true to life in their way of caging and channeling their victims into believing that martyrdom while killing apostates and non-Muslims is acceptable, nay desirable. Of course, they would never go on a mission themselves.
The part that made me weep was when the lads were taken on a solidarity holiday to the mountains just before their mission. These young men were not evil, they were kids who had been deluded and deceived, splashing in mountain streams that they had never had the opportunity to see before and playing football. They had been seduced to terrible effect.
And now I have to declare my interest. I live in Morocco although not in Casablanca. The new tramway extends all the way to Sidi Moumen giving new opportunities to the remaining slums. Morocco has clamped down on jihadists using a network of spies and informers. However, I was by chance in Casablanca the night of the attacks, staying in a hotel 200 yards away from the Safir which was partially blown up. Like an idiot, having heard the explosion from my hotel, I went out to see what had happened. I got about 40 yards down the street before I was lifted off my feet by two burly cops and dragged back to my hotel and slapped hard once they had got me into reception.
I was bewildered ever since and have never truly understood the attraction of being radicalised, either these guys or other terrorists elsewhere. This masterpiece of a film goes a long way to explaining the process to me.
