Category Archives: Film

Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I became a student in a city called Rabat. After spending seven weeks in Morocco it’s hard to come up with the right words to describeContinue reading “Final Reflections of Morocco”

L’enfant endormi, the sleeping child, follows the lives of the women that the men of the village left behind.1 Halima and Zainib, twins, live with their respectful husbands families and are essentially left trapped in the village in which they reside. All of the men have gone to Spain to “find work” and “make someContinue reading “L’enfant endormi”

Morocco is a Muslim majority county where sometimes it can be hard to separate the two cultures. Separation of church does not exist, as the King also holds a second title of “Commander of the Faithful.” No matter where I am, whether bustling city or expansive desert, the Call to Prayer can almost always beContinue reading “Approaching the Quran”

Dark. Blinding. Sterile. Scrub. Repeat. This is the life of Badia in Leïla Kilani’s 2012 movie Sur La Planche (On the Edge). Badia is a young woman in her 20’s who spends her days shucking shrimp by the kilo and falls into a life of illicit behavior at night. With the help of another shrimpContinue reading “Sur La Planche”

Bab Al-Sama Maftuh, translated to mean “A Door to the Sky,” is about a woman named Nadia who returns from France to her home in Fes, Morocco as her father has fallen ill and soon after passes away. Nadia’s siblings, Driss and Leyla, are all of opposing opinions about their identity and what they wishContinue reading “Bab Al-Sama Maftuh”

Casablanca Calling is a documentation of three female Quran experts, known as Morchidat, as they try to breakdown misinterpretations of the Quran and reintroduce the classical role women used to hold in religion and in society as a whole. Meriem El Haitami, a Moroccan author who focuses on female religious authority and activism, describes theContinue reading “Casablanca Calling”