Faouzi Bensaïdi Morocco 2017 | 106 minutes

We have been very much looking forward (for a number of years now) to introducing the Ottawa audience, to Faouzi Bensaidi, the Moroccan-born master of the film frame and sculpting bodies in space. His latest film Volubilis (2018) gives us the opportunity to do just that. Choosing to train his kino-eye on those socially marginalized  globalization (this planetary equal-opportunity marginalizer), he examines the ways in which class inequality exacerbated by rampant consumerism and cultural leveling combine to crush the least of these but also provoke profound identity crises with reverberations far beyond the shores of the African continent and indeed throughout the other continents.  Bensaidi was one of the first to register this with his 2006 film What a Wonderful World. Premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Volubilis won the Silver Tanit at the Carthage Film Festival and was voted Moroccan Film of the Year in 2018.