Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are runaways living rough on the streets of Morocco. Having split from the gang of the much older Dib because of being raped, the four live at the port, where Ali dreams of becoming a sailor because of the stories his mother used to tell him years before. When Dib and his gang turn up looking for a fight, Ali is truck with a rock and dies soon after. His friends plan to bury him but it is not long before the stresses start to break them apart; Kwita starts working with the sailor who had taken Ali in while Omar visits Ali's prostitute mother for the first of several times.
I'm not sure why I happened to end up watching this film but I am glad that I did because the story is not one that you hear often enough that of the many kids who live on the streets of third world cities. Here the story is set about the friends trying to bury Ali in a manner that is fitting the dreams he had when he was alive but the film uses this to also show us the world of poverty, fear and abuse that street kids suffer. It is this aspect that kept me interested and it is depressing and rather powerful. The main story has a tendency towards a sentimentality that I suspect the street has little room for in reality. In my case though I was into the characters enough to be able to forgive this although you can't help feeling that the dark touches are really more of these kids' lives than just the mentions that the script gives them.
What really makes the film work though is the natural and convincing performances from the majority of the cast. Hansali won it for me because he seems so very beaten and totally convincing. Kbab seems less at home on the street but has more character and more maturity; meanwhile Moussoune is heartbreaking as the youngest of the group. Taghmaoui's Dib is pretty poor and is written as a basic Fagin character and he is not as exploitative and abusive as the script implies that he is. However the lead actors carry it and they are depressingly convincing.
Overall this is a great little film that manages to cover its weaknesses with its strengths and delivers a depressing tale even if it does tend to be a bit too sentimental for its own good. If nothing else it adds to the profile of a problem as is as complex as it is hopeless.
I'm not sure why I happened to end up watching this film but I am glad that I did because the story is not one that you hear often enough that of the many kids who live on the streets of third world cities. Here the story is set about the friends trying to bury Ali in a manner that is fitting the dreams he had when he was alive but the film uses this to also show us the world of poverty, fear and abuse that street kids suffer. It is this aspect that kept me interested and it is depressing and rather powerful. The main story has a tendency towards a sentimentality that I suspect the street has little room for in reality. In my case though I was into the characters enough to be able to forgive this although you can't help feeling that the dark touches are really more of these kids' lives than just the mentions that the script gives them.
What really makes the film work though is the natural and convincing performances from the majority of the cast. Hansali won it for me because he seems so very beaten and totally convincing. Kbab seems less at home on the street but has more character and more maturity; meanwhile Moussoune is heartbreaking as the youngest of the group. Taghmaoui's Dib is pretty poor and is written as a basic Fagin character and he is not as exploitative and abusive as the script implies that he is. However the lead actors carry it and they are depressingly convincing.
Overall this is a great little film that manages to cover its weaknesses with its strengths and delivers a depressing tale even if it does tend to be a bit too sentimental for its own good. If nothing else it adds to the profile of a problem as is as complex as it is hopeless.