Movie-Database: Movies
LANDLESS MOROCCANS
Credits
Name: LANDLESS MOROCCANS
Country: Marokko
Year of publication: 2017
Format: DCP
Color: color
Language : OF m. dt. UT
Duration: 60 Minuten
Direction: El Kahlaoui, Soraya
Screenplay: El Kahlaoui, Soraya
Guest: El Kahlaoui, Soraya
Abstract
In February 2014, Moroccan government police squads bulldozed houses belonging to the inhabitants of the Douar Ouled Dlim settlement on the outskirts of Rabat, to make way for a new housing development. The residents refused to leave their land, as it had been handed over to them by the Sultan in 1838 for loyal service and their forefathers had tended the fields and gardens there for generations. Even after the police’s intervention, many of them continued to brave it out living in makeshift wooden and plastic shacks on the levelled wasteland. The occupiers organised demonstrations, congregations and confrontations with bureaucrats, and the sociologist Soraya El Kahlaoui was present with her camera throughout.
The result is an object lesson on state violence in neoliberal times and the possibilities and boundaries of resistance.
Soraya El Kahlaoui’s film debut LANDLESS MOROCCANS illustrates how it’s not only foreign profiteers who are responsible for the current land grabbing situation in African countries, as local investors show similar disregard for traditional land rights.