THE HEALER
Morocco, Italy, Qatar I 2018 I Arabic dialogue with English subtitles l 102 min
Swedish premiere
On the outskirts of a Moroccan mining town, 16-year-old Abdou is anxious to regain his dignity by learning to read and write. His adoptive mother Mbarka, the neighbourhood healer, guards her privileged status through her apt use of a gift for obscurantism. Thirty-year-old Ch’aayba, meanwhile, is an eccentric, uncontrollable pickpocket who is suffering from a skin condition. When Abdou convinces the ferociously cynical Chaayba to visit Mbarka in order to cure him of his disease, the fate of the three becomes intertwined as they spin around on a carousel of illusion. With The Healer, director Mohamed Zineddaine constructs a gripping tale set within a society entangled in the tug-of-war between traditions and modernity.
CAST & CREDITS
Director: Mohamed Zineddaine
Writer: Mohamed Zineddaine, Olivier Bombarda
Cast: Fatima Attif, Mehdi El Arroubi, Ahmed El Moustafid, Nisrine Adam
DOP: Luca Coassin
Producer: Mohamed Zineddaine, Rachida Saadi, Mario Chemello
Mohamed Zineddaine was born in the small village of Oued-zem, Morocco. A mediocre pupil as a child, he was seduced by the written word and devoted himself to becoming a great reader. In 1983, he left Morocco to study computer science at the University of Nice. On recognising this was not his passion, he left his schooling and moved to Italy, eventually settling in Bologna, where he began his training as a director. A reporter, photographer, screenwriter, and producer, Zineddaine’s feature-length films include La vecchia ballerina (2002), Réveil (2004), Tu te souviens d’Adil?(2008), Colère (2012), and The Healer (2018).