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Zero in the midst of Casablanca

- Nour-Eddine Lakhmari’s third feature film

Nour-Eddine Lakhmari’s third feature film 

In the context of its newly opened section “Vu d’ailleurs”- “seen from elsewhere” - Cineuropa dedicates its attention to ZERO, a particularly significant Moroccan film by Nour-Eddine Lakhmari. Due to its outstanding content and aesthetic, ZERO is a phenomenon in Morocco. It is also the second movie of a trilogy, whose first film has already made a buzz with the Moroccan audience.   

Zero tells the story of Amine Bartal, a cop at odds with his environment who lives from day to day by conducting his little tricks here and there. Zero is not some extraordinary man, but rather someone who suffers, someone whom the audience can relate to; he has all the characteristics of an anti-hero. His superior is despotic, corrupt and protects a network of luxury prostitution. His father is paralyzed and lives on the remains of a bygone authority. Zero himself spends his days with a young prostitute and is forbidden to carry a gun due to his alcohol problems. To sum up, he is a Zero… until one day, when he decides to bring order into his life. Then slowly the audience witnesses his transformation, as he takes action and goes to the end of his choice.

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Due the themes it tackles – alcoholism, prostitution, corruption – Lakhmari’s third film is far from being auto-censored. Uninhibited, it shows a raw and cruel city where crooked cops and prostitution networks are part of the reality.  The film, although quite straightforward and violent, has started to attract a large audience. In Morocco 70.000 people went to see the movie within its two first weeks of screening.  The film got also awarded five prices at the recent Morocco’s national film festival in Tangier. Unusual as it deals with sensitive topics, Zero has only started its way to the top of the box office.

End of 2012, Zero was 4th in the Moroccan National box office. As for the Moroccan International box office, its two top films were Moroccan, with Zero on the 7th place. As we can see, when it comes to cinema, Morocco has considerable assets. The growth experienced by domestic production and the emergence of Morocco as an international shooting platform has prompted the Moroccan government to give strong support to its cinema. Thanks to the active help of the Moroccan Cinematographic center, the country is now the biggest producer of the Mediterranean basin. The Centre has provided for the period 2012 a total of 36 shooting authorizations for Moroccan long and short film. However, this help is not sufficient as the Moroccan cinema suffers from multiple ailments of exploitation. These include the closure of 179 movie theaters between 1980 and 2007, the diminution of distributors from  13 in 2004 to only 6 in 2007 and the diminution of the audience from 45 million in 1980 to 4 million in 2006. Furthermore 3 out of 4 remaining movie theaters do not meet the minimum professional conditions necessary for film screening. Consequently, Zero represents the example of a successful Moroccan cinema that needs to be fostered and further encouraged. Indeed, despite its irregular presence on the movie screens, Moroccan film, when it happens to be distributed can reach peaks at the box office.

Julie Belgrado

In the section Vu d'ailleur ("seen from elsewhere"), Cineuropa introduces you to non-european film and cinematography. An occasion to discover another cinema

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