Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Baker 2

  Must watch for filmmakers and cinephiles.

  Watched on Mubi. It can be found in the permanent collection.

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★

  There's a fascinating history to About Some Meaningless Events, as it premiered in the 1970s and then was banned and lost for decades before being found and restored recently. However the film itself ends up a little flat. It is semi-improvised docufiction, but very clearly is artificial in construction. Mostly the film consists of indecision, discussion, and debate, mostly around what makes for meaningful cinema. Rather aptly, the film ends up meaningless. People philosophise and drink and talk, but no single conclusion is reached. Even the finale, which is nominally confrontational, ends without an answer. This is a film which dares to question what cinema should be, and what its social purpose is. One interviewee discusses how films are either…

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  Review by Youssef Boucetta

  The film begins by establishing itself as a simple documentary examining Moroccans’ opinions about the state of their own national cinema and about their general taste in films. I would have been satisfied if the film limited itself to these cinema verite style series of conversations with random subjects trying to measure the beat of society’s interest in political/engaged artistic productions. And the film was quite succesful at that.

  
   And then boom. Fictional elements start sneaking in without one realizing it because, of course, this is still passing itself as a documentary succesfully. Until the fictional conquers the story and creates a rich ambiguity where one genuinely starts wondering what is true and what isn’t, all done in a climactic…

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  Review by brintharaj ★★★★

  An intriguing docu-drama that questions the function and form of cinema. The boundary of reality and artifice blurs, as a young filmmaker’s attempts to gauge the public perception of cinema is framed within the contemplations of whether or not cinema that doesn’t tackle real problems end up being bad films manufactured for the bourgeoisie.

  Mainly unfolding in the streets and especially in a lively bar in Casablanca, where the ambience is quite something, and conversations between patrons often getting tense and progressing into fistfights. In the midst of these interviews, the camera is often drawn and latches onto the suspecting demeanour of a young man, as if it had a mind of its own and was capable of seeking out…

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 2

  World Tour 2021

  What I like to call 'a proper Mubi chin stroker'.

  They love adding this sort of thing to their catalogue, bless 'em, and it's always fun seeing reviews of it on Mubi from people using the most enormous words known to humankind as they attempt to convince people they understood it.

  Just because it's old and Moroccan and was lost for about 40 years, doesn't mean you have to pretend it's good. It's just not.

  (Usual caveat that I'm a pea-brain.)

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  Review by Macarena Bialski ★★★★★ 2

  I can’t imagine the reaction of the “Filmoteca de Cataluña” after finding this masterpiece (which had been forgotten for over 45 years).

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  Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★

  “Do you think killing somebody is going to change anything?”
  “And you think you’re changing something with your camera?”

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  Review by maneleeo ★★★½

  Is this reality? Is cinema a tool capable of portraying the world as it is? Is it just a way for people to get rich? Is it fake in every single aspect? Am I watcing a documentary or is everything staged? Many questions, no answers, and a lot to think about.

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  Review by jrhovind ★★★★

  A verité attempt to invent a Moroccan cinema from scratch becomes a jazzy, cacophonous, red wine-fueled journey through the crowded bars around Casablanca’s docks, ultimately wondering what the purpose of cinema even is anyway. “Are you shooting a feature film?” “I couldn’t tell yet.” Wanting to avoid the narcotizing, populist trap of the Egyptian films dominating Arabic cinema at the time, the filmmakers find so many people hungry to see their own lives and problems on the screen; rejecting the cinema they’re fed as so many ways of avoiding reality, that cinema can instead, Kiarostami-like, bring us back to reality, help us discover it in a way we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. “I want a cinema which comes from…

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  Review by V. Lepistö ★★★★

  When cinema is not enough. What can we really expect from films? What is the meaning of national cinema? Camera wonders but is unable to dig deeper. Moves pretty much in the same territory as Close-up but years earlier and the structure feels looser, events go on and nothing happens for a long time but camera keeps on rolling. What if cinema is just a theory? This is a film that simply provokes questions and refuses or is unable to answer. It's a film about all those core questions that one has to answer or find some relationship with before they can try to make sense of what they believe in when they watch cinema.

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  Review by Dave Courtney ★★★★

  "You think you're changing something with your camera?"

  "Cinema of truth."

  Candid, obscure, raw, and shockingly relevant. Street level cinema with an edge.

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  Review by Alonso Díaz de la Vega ★★★★

  Qué estúpido es ese lugar común de la carta de amor al cine. Las más de las veces se usa para estereotipar a las películas que hablan sobre sí mismas como un ejercicio romántico entre los cineastas y su medio; sin embargo muchas de esas cartas sugieren, más bien, amargura. Ahí está Sunset Boulevard, de Billy Wlder, y también su posterior parodia, Fedora, que es de plano cruel. Ni hablar de 8 1/2 o Dolor y gloria, que hablan más bien de la incomodidad que provoca una vida dedicada a construir imágenes. About Some Meaningless Events, de Mostafa Derkaoui, se suma a esa amargada tradición con la pregunta de cómo debe ser un cine nacional. Un grupo de cineastas interrumpe…