Said El Alami and Achraf Afir play the main characters as young boys in ‘Horses of God.’ Wall Street Journal, Photo: Kino Lorber
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* An Arabic-language film about suicide bombers comes to the U.S. with the support of director Jonathan Demme. Mr. Demme has championed “Horses of God” since he and his son first saw it at the Marrakesh Film Festival in December, 2012. “I feel like ‘Horses of God’ is one of the finest films I’ve seen in years.” *
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Nabil Ayouch on the set of ‘Horses of God.’ Kino Lorber. Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal, by Tobias Grey (May 8, 2014) ― The day after the Moroccan city of Casablanca was rocked by a series of suicide bombings in May 2003, film director Nabil Ayouch reacted in the only way he knew how: He grabbed his video camera and went out into the street. Mr. Ayouch’s resulting 10-minute documentary “Pour Ne Pas Oublier” (“To Not Forget”), released that same year, paid homage to the 33 victims of the suicide bombings through interviews with their families. This was by no means the end of the story for Mr. Ayouch, who is best known for his 2007 feature “Whatever Lola Wants,” about a New York postal worker who travels to Egypt to become a belly dancer.
His latest film, “Horses of God” (opening at New York’s Film Forum on May 14), dramatizes the lives of the young suicide bombers who grew up in one of Morocco’s largest slums, Sidi Moumen, near Casablanca. Mr. Ayouch, the 45-year-old son of a Jewish Tunisian mother and a Muslim Moroccan father, grew up in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles and moved to Casablanca 15 years ago. “I knew quite a lot of people living in Sidi Moumen and I could not get it out of my head how blind we had been not to see what was happening in our midst,” said Mr. Ayouch. So a few years after completing his documentary, Mr. Ayouch decided to revisit Sidi Moumen. He sought out friends and relatives of the suicide bombers to try to understand what happened.
Around the same time, Mr. Ayouch learned that a Moroccan author, Mahi Binebine, was also in Sidi Moumen working on a novel about the suicide bombers’ lives. Mr. Binebine’s novel, originally titled “The Stars of Sidi Moumen,” was translated from French into English and published last year in the U.S. by Tin House. Before his novel’s 2010 publication in France, Mr. Binebine agreed to send it to Mr. Ayouch, who immediately bought the film rights and hired Moroccan screenwriter Jamal Belmahi to work on a script. “I discovered everything that I needed in Mahi’s novel, especially the gradual way these 10-year-old boys grew up to become suicide bombers,” said Mr. Ayouch. The main focus of Mr. Ayouch’s Arabic-language film, which is largely faithful to Mr. Binebine’s novel, is on two brothers who grow up without any kind of formal education.
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