A
fictional account of the lives of the men responsible for the suicide
bombings in Casablanca in 2003. These are street kids from poor families
where everyday violence, mental illness, corruption, and dope-dealing
compete with fantasies of escaping to Western Europe to earn scads of
money or dreams of making it as a professional soccer player. They are
subject to the lure of religious fanatics who blame their misfortune on
“the imperialist Zionist conspiracy” and offer a “community of new
brothers” to those who will submit to the discipline of martyrdom. Nabil
Ayouch’s deeply moving film has been lauded for its “brutal poetry” and
the realism with which it depicts how insidiously and cynically
fundamentalists ply their trade.