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How a pair of slum kids are turned into killers, by the tiny trials of life as much as by Islamist brainwashing, goes under the microscope in an ambitious Cannes film based on the 2003 Casablanca attacks.
“God’s Horses” by the French director of Moroccan origin Nabil Ayouch follows the destiny of two brothers, Yachine and Hamid, from their childhood up to the day they each pack a bomb on their backs and choose to die for Allah.
“I’ve had enough of hearing that poverty and oppression equals suicide bomber,” Ayouch told AFP on Saturday, after a screening at the festival’s Un Certain Regard new talent section that earned him a standing ovation.
“That’s a short cut you hear a lot, both in the West and the Arab world. But you can’t just take a kid and brainwash him to kill. If that were true, there would be millions of suicide bombers.
“I wanted to understand exactly how some kids — who remain kids until the end — can be made into suicide bombers,” said the 43-year-old.
From the rough-and-tumble of the childhood football pitch, to the thuggery and injustice the brothers face as they try to make a living as young adults, his film depicts two lives at the bottom of the pecking order.
Because of his lowly status, the shy Yachine pines after a local girl who will remain agonisingly out of reach, guarded by her family for a better marriage prospect.
When Hamid — his elder, tougher brother — is jailed for defying a local bigwig, he returns transformed by an encounter with Islamist “brothers”, drawing his sibling and their childhood friends in his wake.
Ninety percent of Ayouch’s cast including its two lead actors are non-professionals, recruited from the vast Casablanca slum of Sidi Moumen where the real-life bombers were enrolled by Islamic extremists.
The film was almost entirely shot in a shantytown a few kilometres from Sidi Moumen, reflecting the deeply limited horizons of its characters, one of whom travels into the city for the first time the day of the attacks.
“Of course poverty is part of the reason. But it’s all the tiny traumas of existence,” Ayouch said. “A mix of social, economic and intellectual poverty, of broken family structures with absent father figures.
