We only ever hear snippets of Asan’s backstory (during an argument, one of the kids resorts to the old “those who can’t, teach” logic in reference to Asan’s now defunct music career) but his renegade, harsh-but fair attitude is quickly established. The film begins in that register too, with the arrival to Casablanca of newly recruited hip-hop teacher Asan. Vérité social commentary, for example, sits at odds with the framing of the film as a classical inspirational-teacher narrative, right down to a final moment that, insamuch as a ragtag gang of adolescent Moroccan rappers on a rooftop ever could, plays like a riff on the “Oh captain, my captain!” moment from “Dead Poets Society.” But other attempts at cross-breeding approaches and genre elements don’t work quite so well. He is also making a difference within that community: With the film shot in fits and starts over the course of two years, Ayouch’s agenda in passionate support of institutions like this one, and teachers like Anas (Anas Basbousi, also a rapper-turned-teacher in real life) is unmistakable.Īnd so “Casablanca Beats” with its non-professional cast and real-world setting, is a beguiling mix of documentary and fiction, reflected in the aesthetics of Virginie Surdej and Amine Messadi’s dynamic, off-the-cuff photography. This is filmmaking as celebration and also intervention - in casting the center’s real attendees as fictionalized versions of themselves, Ayouch is not just telling the story of the notorious Casablanca neighborhood of Sidi Moumen that he, as a longtime resident of the city, knows so well.
But it’s the specificity of the setting, in the music room of an embattled Casablanca arts center, where a motley collection of local adolescents bond, bicker and brag through the medium of hip-hop, that gives Ayouch’s film the buzz of real-life resistance emerging in real time, demonstrating how music builds into a movement.
“You have to change it because you didn’t choose it.” The defiant mantra that evolves over the course of Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s scrappy but heartfelt hip-hop street-musical “ Casablanca Beats,” his third time in Cannes but first time in competition, could be a rallying cry for any youth activism group, anywhere in the world.
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