Les Mécréants

Credits

Name: Les Mécréants

Country: Schweiz; Marokko

Year of publication: 2011

Format: Blue-ray

Color: color

Language : OF arab. m. dt. UT

Duration: 88 Minuten

Direction: Besri, Mohcine

Screenplay: Besri, Mohcine

Camera: Montjovent, Pascal

Editing: Bachiri, Naima

Sound: Hafner, Gabriel

Actor: Benjhaile, Rabii; Bouali, Aïssam; El Beniwi, Abdenbi; El Haouni, Jamila; El Houari, Mustapha; Ennaji, Amine; Lalouaz, Maria; Lotfi, Omar

Abstract

On the order of their spiritual leader, three young Islamists kidnap a group of actors who are about to go on tour with their latest show. When the kidnappers arrive at the place of detention, they find themselves cut off from their base. Ensues a 7-day no exit situation, in which both sides are forced to live together, confront each other and challenge their mutual prejudices.
Director Mohcine Besri says, „On the one side men who can’t stand their daily conditions and the absence of a better future’s perspective, lost within Morocco, a country in total upheaval trying to embrace modernity, shutting themselves of in religious obscurantism. On the other side men and women, from respective backgrounds, bearing the same lot, fighting the same corruption. Their cultural activism is not more efficient than the former´s religious extremism. These two sides don’t usually get to truly meet,  their respective prejudice against their opponents preventing each to see the human being under the long beard or the mini-skirt. With seven days of forced proximity, certainty invariably leads to doubts.“