With Everybody Loves Toudapresented at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Première category, Franco-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch continues his work of painting contemporary Moroccan society, this time through the portrait of a free woman dreaming of becoming a sheikha, an artist traditional who sings the aïta, which means “the cry”, in Arabic. The film hits theaters Wednesday, December 18.
Touda, a peasant’s daughter, lives in a small provincial town, with her deaf and mute little boy, whom she raises alone. To earn a living, she sings and dances in bars, at village festivals, at weddings, under the mocking gaze and wandering hands of an exclusively male clientele, often drunk.
The only other women she meets are her competitors, who are often aggressive. He also sometimes sings in the open air, may the party be beautiful, and may it end badly. This is how the film opens, with a rape scene, which remains imprinted throughout the film, as the mark of a constant threat weighing on Touda, and on all women.
Touda gets up and goes back to work. This sensual, free woman pays dearly for her independence in a society that has difficulty accepting a woman living alone. She draws her strength from her love for Yassine, her adorable son and from music and singing. Touda dreams of becoming a sheikha, a traditional singer who performs subversive texts, love and resistance in chants born from cries.
Tired of singing every night for libidinous drunkards for a few dirhams, she decides to leave her town to try her luck in Casablanca. In the meantime, like a breath in this race forward, Touda drops off her son on his childhood farm, in mountainous landscapes of breathtaking beauty.
“These women were resistance fighters, heroines,” Nabil Ayouch explained to the public, very moved in front of the Cannes public. “There are not many things that help me stay the course, there is the belief in everyone who allowed me to make this film, to share it and to celebrate it with you here, and there is a burning, passionate love for Morocco and for the Moroccan people”he continued.
Through the portrait of a powerful woman, magnificently embodied by Nisrin Erradi, Nabil Ayouch draws the contours of a society still marked by patriarchy. Touda is resisting. Refusing to be prey, she remains in control of her body, of her desires, and tries to remain in control of her destiny, despite the obstacles.
The Moroccan director films bodies, its sufferings and exultations, sensuality, life, freedom. He deploys this strong story in a tense staging, carried by the voice of Touda, in a cadence close to trance. With images in warm tones, energetic editing, music at the heart of the film and a camera as close as possible to Touda, the director follows in the footsteps of his heroine.
In a final hope, the young woman goes up in an elevator, only to take it down a few minutes later, a smile bathed in tears, which leaves open the end of this moving story.
“In this world where bombs abound everywhere, it’s important to have this strength, it’s important to stay the course, it’s important to continue making films, it’s important to continue sailing between the bombs In the end, that’s perhaps what cinema is, navigating between the bombs.estimated Nabil Ayouch.
Genre : Drama
Director: Nabil Ayouch
Actors: Nisrin Erradi, Joud Chamihy, Jalila Tlemsi
Pays : Morocco
Duration : 1h42
Sortie : December 18, 2024
Distributer : To Life
Synopsis : Touda dreams of becoming a sheikha, a traditional Moroccan artist, who sings without shame or censorship texts of resistance, love and emancipation, transmitted for generations. Performing every evening in the bars of her small provincial town under the gaze of men, Touda nourishes the hope of a better future for herself and her son. Mistreated and humiliated, she decides to leave everything for the lights of Casablanca…
