'Casablanca Beats' Review: A Lively, Unruly Moroccan Hip-Hop Drama

'Casablanca Beats' Review: A Lively, Unruly Moroccan Hip-Hop Drama
'Casablanca Beats' Review: A Lively, Unruly Moroccan Hip-Hop Drama
An exuberant mixture of street musical, inspirational-teacher drama and documentary advocacy that is not quite coherent enough to satisfy.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Director: Nabil Ayouch
With: Anas Basbousi, Ismail Adouab, Meriem Nekkach, Nouhaila Arif, Zineb Boujemaa, Abdelilah Basbousi, Mehdi Razzouk, Amina Kannan, Soufiane Belali, Samah Barigou, Marwa Kniniche, Maha Menan. (Arabic dialogue)
Running time: Running Time: 101 MIN.
Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
“You have to change it because you didn’t choose it.” The defiant mantra that evolves over the course of Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s scrappy but heartfelt hip-hop street-musical “Casablanca Beats,” his third time in Cannes but first time in competition, could be a rallying cry for any youth activism group, anywhere in the world. But it’s the specificity of the setting, in the music room of an embattled Casablanca arts center, where a motley collection of local adolescents bond, bicker and brag through the medium of hip-hop, that gives Ayouch’s film the buzz of real-life resistance emerging in real time, demonstrating how music builds into a movement.

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