Cinema releases: “The Lion King”, “Sarah Bernhardt” and “Everybody Loves Touda”, the films to see this week

“It is undoubtedly the great family film of these Christmas holidays. Five years after “The Lion King”, which had enjoyed worldwide success, and forty years after the cartoon released in 1994, Disney Studios are offering a prequel in which they tell the story of the youth and the adventures experienced by the young Mufasa, before he became one of the greatest kings of the Land of Lions…

This animated film with ultra-realistic staging, all in computer graphics, was designed by Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonligh”, who is trying his hand at animation for the first time. In the French version, the dubbing is provided by Tahar Rahim, Jamel Debbouze, Alban Ivanov…”

• “Sarah Bernhardt, la Divine”

“Directed by Guillaume Nicloux, performed by Sandrine Kiberlain, who finds here one of her greatest roles, “Sarah Bernhardt, the Divine” is a film about the first French actress who achieved international fame, but it is not truly a biopic, the film focuses, in fact, on two little-known periods in the life of the tragedienne, between 1896 and 1923: her jubilee organized with great fanfare by her relatives in 1896 and the amputation of his leg in 1915.

Icon of her time, free, modern and eccentric woman, the actress was also a great lover, who defied conventions. Particularly through her passionate, die-hard love story with Lucien Guitry, son of Sacha Guitry, the same one who called her “the Divine”, played on screen by Laurent Lafitte.”

After “Le bleu du caftan”, “Haut et fort” and “Much loved”, which was also banned on its release in Morocco, the Franco-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch continues with “Everybody loves Touda”, his work on Moroccan society. Here, he paints the portrait of Touda, a free woman who dreams of becoming a Cheikha, those artists of traditional aita singing, a Moroccan musical genre normally worn by men, which means “the cry”, in Arabic.

Not without difficulties or pain, a single mother in a patriarchal society which has difficulty accepting that a woman lives alone, Touda, today’s heroine, sings texts of resistance, love and emancipation. Through her character, magnificently embodied by the actress Nisrin Erradi, “Everybody Loves Touda” pays homage to the Sheikhates, these women who were once adored and who are now perceived as women of bad living…”