The Moroccan comedian, actor and animator Rachid El Ouali has gone behind the camera as a director, for the third time. After two short films, his first long film, “Coup de tampon”, was presented last week at the Festival Itinérances d’Alès, then in Nîmes. This new opus is the story of a former Moroccan miner, settled in France for forty years. After learning to be ill, he wishes to end his days in his native land, in Figuig, in the very south-east of Morocco.
This serious theme, Rachid El Ouali wanted to treat it with humor, rather than giving lessons. “I wanted to make a film to share my vision of death. For me, death is the beginning of something magnificent. It’s an opening, a door to something else,” he told Midi Libre. “This idea for the film also came to me from a question: why Moroccans who live 30 or 40 years in France want to return to die in their native lands… And for the main character, I then wondered: how his children will accept this will?”, added the director.
Rachid El Ouali also told Objectif Gard to make films that look like him, “which are very human”. “Reflections around my personal life. This is the first film in which I do not play as an actor”, he underlined. This feature film is thus a tribute to Moroccan workers, who left between the 1950s and 1970s to be mobilized in the mines of northern France. From this story arises a series of reflections around personal questions about life and death, the relationship to others, the duty to remember, forgiveness and recognition.