Skip to content
R18

THE DAMNED DON’T CRY

Genre
Drama
Running time
111 minutes
Year
2022
Language
Arabic and French
Subtitle
English
Country
Morocco, France and Belgium
Director
Fyzal Boulifa
Bio
Producer
Gary Farkas, Clément Lepoutre, Karim Debbagh, Olivier Muller, Karim Debbagh
Cast
Abdellah El Hajjouj, Aicha Tebbae, Antoine Reinartz, Walid Chaibi, Sawsen Kotbi
Scriptwriter
Fyzal Boulifa
After two award-winning short films at the Directors' Fortnight under his belt, Fyzal Boulifa proved himself as a talented writer with his first feature film, Lynn + Lucy. In his latest film “The Damned don’t cry”, we are following two strong characters, Fatima-Zahra who travels with Sélim, her eldest son. It is against their will that they move from one place of accommodation to another and from village to village, they are chased not by poverty or violence but by… scandal, which pursues Fatima-Zahra wherever she goes, like the heavy perfumes she adorns herself with. When Selim discovers the truth about their past, Fatima-Zahra vows to make a fresh start. In Tangier, new opportunities promise the legitimacy they each crave but not without pushing the volatile mother-son relationship to the breaking point. There is nothing “mocking” about this portrait, Boulifa's fine writing preserves the character's dignity without hiding it's pathetic and poignant dimension nor masking the more or less latent violence of each line and situation. “The Damned don’t cry” is actually a double portrait. The daring structure of the script does not go where expected and smoothly alternating between protagonists, passing from mother to son.

Other movies

SABA

Director: Maksud Hossain

Saba, 25, lives in Dhaka with her demanding mother Shirin, a paraplegic whose frustrations and rage often find a target in the daughter who cares for her. When Shirin’s worsening condition requires surgery it falls to Saba to find the money to pay for it. Securing a job at a seedy Shisha bar, Saba befriends the manager Ankur and, for the first time, pictures what a life of her own could look like. Maksud Hossain’s debut feature is a close-up look at a complicated bond between mother and daughter that lurches between love and guilt, co-dependence and the longing for autonomy - but it is also a social drama, detailing the hardships that underlay the riots in Bangladesh earlier this year.

EAST OF NOON

Director: Hala Elkoussy

Stuck in a sandy enclave in the middle of nowhere, aspiring musician Abdo divides his time between digging graves and creating music using household implements. Along with his Nunna, he is plotting his escape to a wider world while scheming to survive the everyday tyranny of the enclave boss, Master Shawky. A story that is very much about the power of story-telling, with some of the flavour of the Arabian Nights, the evocatively titled East of Noon is shot largely in black and white. This surface beauty gives its familiar theme of youthful revolt a surreal, fantastical quality, allowing ideas that would otherwise be taboo to float free.

SAIFY

Director: Wael Abu Mansour

At 40 years old, Saify Muhammed is a washed-up confidence trickster who owes money to everyone, including his ex-wife. Now he is trying his hand at blackmail. The year is 2000; Saify has a dilapidated music shop selling cassette tapes, including recordings of banned Islamic sermons he mistakenly thinks will turn an illicit profit. His sermon supplier is Al-Mahdi, shady religious advisor to the local bigwig Sheikh Asaad Aman, who has a name as a philanthropist. When Saify finds one tape containing a scandalous recording of the influential Sheikh Asaad, he thinks he’s finally in the money.