Abdellah El Hajjouji, Antoine Reinartz, Aicha Tebbae
Fyzal Boulifa’s follow-up to his award-winning 2019 debut Lynn + Lucy is this arresting melodrama – a rich, humane study of a co-dependent mother and son.
Teenager Selim (Adbellah El Hajjouji) and his mother Fatima-Zahra (Aïcha Tebbae) live in close quarters, constantly on the breadline and moving from place to place. Selim has grown up without a father and is bound to his mother, even as he resents her – while in a starkly patriarchal society, Fatima-Zahra needs Selim just as much as he does her. But when a trip to her family village reveals troubling secrets, the strength of their already-volatile bond is put to the test.
Remixing key elements of its 1950 Joan Crawford-starring namesake (and the narrative arc of Pasolini’s Mamma Roma) into a strange and sensuous story, The Damned Don’t Cry explores modes of transgressive sexuality, restrictive cultural expectations and the weight of colonial history. A boldly coloured and atmospheric film, tragic and beautiful, it recalls the work of Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.