Jahilya

When cockroaches dream, they dream of dying a natural death – instead of being squashed by human hand. This prologue forms a leitmotif that runs through the entire third part of Hicham Lasri’s “Trilogy of the Dog”. The film’s frequently hyper-realistic sequences describe the current state of the violent emotional dynamics governing contemporary Morocco: those between men and women, parents and children, the powerful and the disenfranchised. Moments of human humiliation link together the fates of six characters, located in a luxury country estate, an urban environment, and a quarry, respectively: the rape of a young woman; a suicidal man caught up in medieval fantasies; an unmarried daughter’s pregnancy, her blind father only concerned about the racial purity of his family; a bigoted judge; a little boy desperately demanding mutton for a sacrificial feast banned by the king; and the shoe that hit George W. Bush on the head in Iraq. (Berlinale)