Mohammed Asli’s In Casablanca, Angels Don’t Fly
Mohammed Asli’s In Casablanca, Angels Don’t Fly was the winner of the Gold Tanit for Best Film at the 20th edition of the biennial Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia. In Casablanca, Angels Don’t Fly depicts the plight of three migrant Berber workers who try to eke out a living in Morocco’s largest city.
Among the other films shown at Carthage were In the Battlefields by Lebanon’s Danielle Arbid; Zaman, Man of the Reeds by Iraq’s Amer Alwan; and Oussama Faouzi's Egyptian-made I Love Cinema, which tells the story of a young boy’s love for movies in an environment of strict religious intolerance. I Love Cinema is Egypt’s entry for the 2005 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
As quoted in The Daily Star, Zaman, Man of the Reeds' director Amer Alwan explained that he "wanted to make a film that was about humanity; that had a universal appeal and feel. The first film I ever saw when I was eight in Iraq was Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief. To this day I still remember that film."
The Carthage Film Festival is one of the most important showcases for Arab films, which are generally plagued by government censorship and poor distribution even in their own region. Two stellar guests at the festival were Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and actor Omar Sharif.