- In "Adam", a widowed Moroccan pastry chef and mother of a young girl collects a young pregnant and unmarried woman.
- Their friendship is formed by making cakes.
- Director Maryam Touzani signs a sensual and gourmet film against the backdrop of female solidarity.
It is by getting involved that two women find meaning in their lives in Adam by Maryam Touzani, presented this year in Cannes in the Un certain regard section. A widow (Lubna Azabal), mother of a young girl, takes in a pregnant but unmarried woman (Nisrin Erradi). These two women banished from Moroccan society will learn to understand each other by baking. "Food and its preparation are a good way to communicate and get to know each other," explains director Maryam Touzani at 20 Minutes . The two heroines are outcasts, one because she refuses to remarry, the other because she wants to have her baby adopted at birth so that he is not considered a child of sin in Morocco where women are always oppressed.
Sensual and delicious
For her first feature film as director, Maryam Touzani, co-writer of Razzia (2018) by Nabil Ayouch, chose to deliver a story freely inspired by that of a single mother who her parents housed when she was a child. "Cooking is one of the few things that Moroccan women control," she says. This can allow them to find each other. Three generations - mature woman, future mother and little girl - knead and shape appetizing cakes. "I wanted the approach to baking to be sensual and delicious," insists the filmmaker.
A case of transmission
Her actresses took lessons to be able to reproduce the ancestral gestures of Moroccan cooks. "The way they mix flour, semolina and oil allows them to find a connection with their body which has become their enemy," says Maryam Touzani. The inconsolable widow is reborn to tactile sensations and the future mother-to-be finds the playfulness of her youth in front of the bowls and the stoves. "Cooking is also a matter of transmission," says the director. The girl also enters the process. I thought a lot about my mother while making this film. "
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Maryam Touzani tastes a msemen, delicious Moroccan pancake that we discover in her moving film #adam @maryamtouzani #realisatrice #director #patisserie #maroc @advitamdistribution @mansouria_restaurant
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Make you want to eat
Maryam Touzani wants to denounce the way in which girl mothers are still mistreated in Morocco, sometimes going so far as to have to abandon their baby in trash cans. "I want to raise awareness of their torments, of course ... but also make me want to eat with appetite," she says cheekily. Adam makes him win his bet on both counts.
Cinema
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- Cooked
- Cinema
- Feminism
- Morocco