GFF22: Casablanca Beats

Nabil Ayouch’s fictionalised take on the true story of Moroccan kids who discover rap music at a youth club may have worked better as a documentary.

Nabil Ayouch’s latest film is a semi-fictional story centring on an arts centre in Morocco, where teenagers from a notorious neighbourhood known to have produced terrorists and suicide bombers use rap and hip-hop to take a different path in life. Ayouch draws from his own experience in Morocco, and real kids and young adults from the neighbourhood of Sidi Moumen play on-screen versions of themselves. Real-life rapper Anas Basbousi plays an ex-rapper, also named Anas, who has taken a job as a teacher at the town’s arts centre, but still lives in his car out of necessity.

Casablanca Beats is not the Moroccan version of School of Rock; it does not swap Dewey Finn’s obsession for classic rock for Anas’ passion for hip-hop and rap. Light-hearted comparison aside, my issue with the film is that it doesn’t feel like there was any notable character arc or development of the young students’ skills from the beginning of the film up to its conclusion. There is no introduction of hip-hop and rap, no scene that shows Anas demonstrating why this is the music they should listen to and make; they are already rapping when he walks into their lives. 

Ayouch has said that he didn’t want to make a documentary so decided to transpose the real-life experience of these kids into a fictionalised account of the work they are doing in Morocco. The problem is that the film is presented as fiction but doesn’t show the kids’ transition from pre-rap, to them getting on board and honing their talent, and then being fully-fledged. The ideas seem under-developed, with some individual moments where the classroom rapping is presented as something with a much bigger production – almost what the kids see in their head when performing – being highlights, but this approach isn’t used enough.

Anas Basbousi

I feel bad for the low score and think part of the issue is the lack of resonance from the lyrics when they are in a different language. Reading rap lyrics as subtitles and being unable to appreciate the actual delivery - unable to feel the emotion or have the punchlines land instantly - stunts the enjoyment of the musical moments as a non-Arabic speaker. Clearly that’s on me and shouldn’t detract from the film itself, but it left Casablanca Beats feeling very empty to me. The lyrics weren’t good enough to be effective when you are only reading them at the bottom of the screen.

Casablanca Beats does succeed in opening your eyes to the very real struggle that millions of young adults in the Middle East face. You normally have two traditional choices; follow religion in an appropriate yet-restrictive way, or follow it in a fundamentalist, aggressive way. What Casablanca Beats shows us is that there is an alternative to this, that you can strive for something different, via your love of music.