Casablanca 2011. Majhoul (played superbly by Hassan Ben Badida) is released from prison after serving thirty years as a political prisoner for having participated in the 1981 Moroccan “les émeutes du pain” (bread riots). Confused and disoriented, with flowers and one shoe in his hands, he is spotted and considered a potentially interesting interview subject by a television crew covering the chaos of the February 20, 2011, demonstrations in the heart of Casablanca. Distrustful of the situation (similar to the one that landed him in prison thirty years earlier), Majhoul’s sole focus is to re-create the circumstances of his capture and find and reconcile with his wife and family. After a violent altercation with the crew members, Majhoul capitulates when they promise to help him find his family. A frantic, almost Felliniesque, quest ensues through the city and countryside to uncover the truth about the past history of Majhoul (who cannot even remember his name at first) and reunite him with his family.
They Are the Dogs is Lasri’s second feature film, and once again he paints a pessimistic view of contemporary Morocco. The film is as much a commentary on the Arab Spring’s failure to effect real change via revolution in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia as it is a statement on the Moroccan people’s impatience with the promised gradual reforms. On March 9, almost three weeks after the demonstrations depicted in They Are the Dogs, Mohamed VI addressed the nation in a historic twelve-minute televised speech during which he pledged global constitutional and electoral reforms. Consultations were organized that included all sectors of society and were considered successful despite some criticism.
The film’s narrative is structured around a series of parallelisms. The social and political context of the Arab Spring is shown to mirror that of the 1981 riots, save for the fact that in 2011 the whole Maghreb region was in turmoil. Poverty, unemployment, and the wide disparity between the elite rich minority and the majority underclass fueled unrest in both decades. In 1981 the cost of living, including the rise in price of water, electricity, and food staples, spurred Majhoul and his friends to protest. Majhoul’s quest for information and truth about his identity and family finds its parallel in the television crew’s pursuit of the perfect Arab Spring story.
Undergirding the whole narrative is a nagging sense of paranoia about censorship, free speech, and freedom of the press. For example, some of the opening shots of the film frame a male mouth, screen left, voicing words through a megaphone. There is no sound and he seems to have no voice. The screen is black because we are watching the inside of the megaphone. Screeching noises of film sound tests give way to demonstrators chanting “Why are we protesting? Because we have no purchase power.” Repressed voices are finally heard.
Exposing the truth in 2011 Morocco, however, still comes with a price. Journalists are still often harassed by police, many of whom have been trained by secret services in power during the so-called Years of Lead of Hassan II. The television anchor, for example, discloses to one of the crew members that his wife has been receiving unsettling indecent phone calls, a tactic often employed by secret services to intimidate journalists and force them to stop uncovering the truth about hidden histories of human rights abuses, abductions, prison, and torture, which were all common fates for dissidents during those terrifying years. At one point, the crew’s camera is stolen, another tactic still in use today.
The film is a work of memory excavation. Majhoul finds a cafe resembling the one he used to frequent. Inside, television screens report news bytes about the various demonstrations around the Maghreb. Majhoul begins to remember: his house, #7; his wife, Houria; and his friend, Si Hmed Drogueri, with whom he marched during the 1975 Green March organized by Hassan II to reclaim the Western Sahara from Spain and who, ironically, dies from a heart attack when he sees Majhoul. He eventually remembers his name: Majhoul Zawani. During thirty years of electric shock and torture, he was simply #404. He had a mistress, Rawya, whom the crew eventually finds; she is one of the few who believed he would return. He discloses the secret of the bicycle training wheel he picks up near the beginning of the film and carries with him throughout, symbolizing hope of reconciliation. The day he was arrested and thrown into a large sack with other protestors, he had gone to buy flowers for his wife as reconciliation after a fight and to buy the training wheel for his son’s bicycle.
Finally, the crew locates a journalist, Rachid Doukhane, Majhoul’s companion during the Bread Riots. A turncoat now working for the authorities, Doukhane nevertheless points the crew in the direction of Majhoul’s son, Hakim, a champion cyclist. He finally locates his wife, family, and the bicycle. He attempts to replace the wheel but it doesn’t fit. He gives it to Hakim, who, unaware of its significance, rejects both the gift and reconciliation with his father. Everyone has moved on and everything has changed in contemporary, tech-savvy Morocco. Or has it? Lasri forces the spectator to consider just how much or how little change has taken place by interspersing the narrative with shots of rioters expressing their impatience with an archaic monarchical system.
Lasri’s distinct visual signature is evident in the frantic handheld camera shots that move with Majhoul, participating in his quest to recover his life. Lasri’s camera is the camera of the revolution, documenting the urgency of expression and freedom of speech. Yet he offers no easy answers. The film ends as Majhoul is presented on TV3 as a political prisoner whose testimony will prove that Morocco has entered a reconciliation phase. But the screen goes black before he can say his name, implying that he is only one of many hundreds who experienced a similar fate, or worse. They Are the Dogs, ultimately, is an important contribution to the growing number of films and novels depicting the human rights abuses suffered by so many during the Years of Lead.
