The Mother of All Lies

Beginning with the director’s personal reminiscence of having her picture taken for the first time, The Mother of All Lies soon reveals the involvement of Asmae El Moudir’s family, gathered together to work on the re-creation of her childhood neighborhood in Casablanca with cardboard models and puppets. Around and within these sets, she investigates how the brutality of Morocco’s King Hassan II’s dictatorial regime permeated family life and relationships. “The Mother of All Lies is a bruising piece of work. Not just because of the emotional excavation El Moudir pushes her family toward . . . but because it stresses, in its quasi-animated spectacle, a shared artistic vision of how memory operates” (Manuel Betancourt, Variety).