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This very committed film tells the hell of single mothers in Morocco. After its official selection at the Cannes Festival and having won sixteen prizes at international festivals, "Adam", the first feature film by the Moroccan Maryam Touzani, is released this Wednesday, January 15 in theaters in Morocco, three weeks before its release in France .
“ I am one of those people who want to say things. As an actress, Maryam Touzani always faced her roles with great courage. In the film-phenomenon Razzia , co-written with her husband, director Nabil Ayouch, she embodies heroin with a certain taste for transgression. Without forgetting his short films and documentaries without compromise on prostitution in Morocco or the exploitation of children. With her first feature film, shot in the Medina of Casablanca, she remains true to herself.
Through many close-ups, Maryam Touzani expresses on the screen a very personal vision of the story of Samia, a young pregnant woman, unmarried and in disarray. Rejected by society, she wants to give her future child for adoption. One day, she knocks on the door of Abla, pastry chef, and herself a mother who is raising her 8-year-old daughter alone. Adam is a frank denunciation of the situation of unmarried women in Morocco.
"For mothers, it's hell"
“ The worst thing that can happen to a woman in Morocco is to be pregnant without being married. Until 2004, children born out of wedlock were invisible, that is, they had no identity. This has changed. But even if they have an identity, we know that they are children born out of wedlock. It is a burden that they carry all their life. They are always pointed. It's very difficult. You cannot imagine. For moms, it's hell. "
The desire to make this very committed film arose at a very precise moment in her life, when she was pregnant with her child. “ When I started writing this film, I started to feel my child moving inside of me. Fifteen years before, I met a young single mother whom my parents had welcomed. I lived all this with her : the experience of motherhood and then this child whom she had to abandon. At the time, this deeply moved and marked me. Fifteen years later, I felt in my flesh and understood a lot about motherhood and what this woman could feel. There, I had a need to tell. "
"I love the intimate"
In his way of giving the images an extremely long infusion time, we feel his deep desire to stay very close to the character, to immerse ourselves in this intensely emotional story. “ Me, what I love is the intimate. I love the interior of the characters. I want to be able to dig, to go under their skin, to penetrate their soul, to tell them in the most 'true' way possible, the closest to what they are internally. "
And when the “inside” comes out in the form of a baby, it gives two incredible sequences with the newborn Adam in the center. Perhaps the longest scenes ever shot with a baby in the history of cinema.
“ For me, it was essential to really discover this child, us, as people who watch the film, at the same time as this woman who discovers her child. I wanted to take the time, that we could stop and be in what she saw in detail, in what she felt. For me, it was very important in order to get to really go inside, to see what motherhood was. I wanted to let this scene impose its rhythm and also let this child impose its rhythm on him too. "
Suspicious reactions in Morocco
It remains to be seen how Moroccans will feel and welcome this film of great emotional beauty and above all uncompromising on the terrible situation of single women in Morocco. In the kingdom, abortion and sexual relations outside marriage remain heavily condemned by law.