Olivier Bombarda

Sixteen-year-old Hamid sits alone on a small boat in the port of Kenitra, surrounded by ships, sirens and screaming seagulls. "Why does everything feel so fake? Am I cursed?" From this haunting opening, the film unfolds in flashbacks, revealing the weeks that brought him to this moment.

On the outskirts of Khouribga, a mining town exploiting phosphates, a 16-year old teenager, Abdou, is anxious to regain the gift of human dignity through learning how to read and write. His adoptive mother Mbarka, the neighborhood’s healer, protects her privileged status with ways that the laws of obscurantism allow her. Ch’Aayba, a 30-year old guy, uncontrollable and ferociously cynical, is an eccentric pickpocket. Suffering from a skin disease, Abdou convinces him to come see Mbarka in order to get treatment for it.

Sixteen-year-old Hamid sits alone on a small boat in the port of Kenitra, surrounded by ships, sirens and screaming seagulls. "Why does everything feel so fake? Am I cursed?" From this haunting opening, the film unfolds in flashbacks, revealing the weeks that brought him to this moment.

On the outskirts of Khouribga, a mining town exploiting phosphates, a 16-year old teenager, Abdou, is anxious to regain the gift of human dignity through learning how to read and write. His adoptive mother Mbarka, the neighborhood’s healer, protects her privileged status with ways that the laws of obscurantism allow her. Ch’Aayba, a 30-year old guy, uncontrollable and ferociously cynical, is an eccentric pickpocket. Suffering from a skin disease, Abdou convinces him to come see Mbarka in order to get treatment for it.