London - Winning the Best Screenplay Award at the Moroccan National Film Festival and the Best Male Actor for the two main children at the Oran Arab Film Festival in Algeria, feature film MAJID has received strong acclaim across the foreign film festival circuit.
Closing London’s 2012 MENA Film Festival last month, Leighton House Museum screened a touching tale about a young orphan boy whose strive to find a photograph of his dead parents takes him on an adventure to the big city of Casablanca, in Morocco. With the help of 11-year old friend Larbi, who comes from a poor family, the boys are faced with a world of anger and injustice.
“Somebody told me that the violence in my movie is hidden. It’s not the physical act of violence that hits you, it’s the poverty, the misery of how poor these people are – that’s the violence that hits stronger,” said director Nassim Abassi about his new film MAJID.
When 10- year old orphan Majid is filmed running up a hill, he is taken aback by looking ahead and seeing a photograph of him in his parent’s arms – he can see himself as a baby but his parents are faceless silhouettes. Flashing from the burnt photograph to his parents in flames, Majid wakes up and the delicate tone that introduces the film turns crisp.
Majid’s vulnerability from the start is themed by what the director refers to as layers of “Hoggra,” an Arabic word for when you feel there is no justice, you feel oppression but you can’t do anything about it.
Whilst attending film school at the University of Creative Arts in the United Kingdom (UK), Nassim originally started writing the screenplay in English because he wanted to get financing for the film in the UK.  Failing to find a British producer interested in the movie, which was to be shot in Morocco and in the language of the country, Nassim was backed by funding from the Moroccan Cinematographic Centre and decided to produce it himself so he could keep it as faithful to the way he sees Moroccan society.
Challenging the extremist picture of religion and showing what Islam means to Moroccans was a personal message Nassim wanted to put across with MAJID: “In the western movies, they don’t have the picture that we know, that’s why I stopped looking for a producer because I knew that these types of issues would be difficult for western producers to show.”
In the film, after hovering at the door of a Mosque, Majid decided to take his shoes off and step inside for the first time. Handled beautifully, his confusion was endearing as he copied the bowing and kneeling of other Muslim believers. When left alone, Majid asks Allah to bring his parents to visit him.
Nassim discovered the boy who played Majid, real name Brahim Al Bakali, three months before casting in North Morocco. “He was playing acrobatics in the street for money with his four brothers to help his parents.  I noticed how expressive his eyes are, which is why I chose him to play the orphan.”
In real life the boys are switched. Lotfi Saber who plays Larbi is an orphan whose mother abandoned him: “It is like a Dicken’s story” Nassim said. “Before Lofti was picked up by the police and taken to an orphanage, he was begging on the streets with five other boys working for this old lady.”
What’s beautiful about this film is how the director plays with the audience’s sensibilities – you expect the tone to be of a sombre one, but instead the charming narration entrusts light hearted humour to empower the natural and unforgettable friendship between the two boys.
“The orphan boy is on the quest for identity, and the other boy is on the quest for dignity, so it is like they are complementing each other. These are the two sides of the film I wanted to show,” Nassim said.
The film will be shown exclusively at 12.30 on Satarday 19th January 2013 at the
Coronet cinema in Notting Hill, London, thanks to the sponsorship of the British-Moroccan Society, a London-based charity.