'Ali Zaoua' finds magical beauty in street kids' bleak reality

By Moira Macdonald

Set in the seared streets and vacant lots of Casablanca, "Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets" is populated by children: boys, aged perhaps 8 or 9, with scratchy little voices and sad eyes. There's nothing cute about these boys — they're grubby street urchins, petty thieves and glue sniffers — and nothing childlike about their dilemma, as they try to collect money to bury a dead friend in the manner of a prince.

Director/co-writer Nabil Ayouch spent several years befriending actual Moroccan street kids before making his film, and this is reflected in the ease of the mostly non-actor cast. The boys, who alternate between boyish exuberance and soul-crushing sadness, are perfectly natural for Ayouch's camera, giving a documentary-like realism to the story.

It's clear from the start that there can be no happy ending for these Lost Boys — abandoned by their parents, their choices are to live alone on the dangerous streets, or to join up with the mysteriously scarred Dib (Said Tahgmaoui), a sadistic gang leader. But Ayouch, carefully walking a tightrope between realism and sentimentality, shows us a third option: a magical fantasy future, shown in animation, in which young Ali, who always wanted to be a sailor, paddles away to an island paradise.

And director of photography Vincent Mathias finds the beauty in an ink-blue Moroccan night sky, or a watercolorlike final shot with two suns quietly glowing. "Ali Zaoua" occasionally crosses the line into heavy-handedness, particularly in one scene in which a boy repeatedly tosses away a lame puppy who nonetheless keeps returning. But it's the eyes of the children, not the puppy, that stay with you after "Ali Zaoua" is over — as well as the compassion that's evident in every frame.

March 15, 2002

By Jamie Russell

Ali Zaoua may have been left to wander the streets of Casablanca with the rest of the city's glue-sniffing street urchins, but when he's killed in a stone fight with a gang of boys, his three friends decide to bury him "like a prince".

Eking out a life amid the squalor of Morocco's port and taking refuge in the city's abandoned construction sites, Kwita, Omar, and Boubker don't have much chance of giving him the funeral he deserves. They can barely find enough food to eat, whatever money they steal gets spent on glue, and deaf-and-dumb gang leader Dib (Saïd Taghmaoui, from "Three Kings") is after them.

Nabil Ayouch's film immerses us in the lives of these grubby street kids, limiting the adult roles to just three characters. It's at its best when showing us the fractured innocence that these children share - they may only be eight, but they've already developed an understanding of the harsh realities of the world that's far beyond their years. At the same time, Ayouch captures their childish dreams in a series of (glue-induced) hallucinations where a series of chalk drawings come to life.

The script puts this clash between innocence and experience to good effect in the marvellous dialogue that constantly switches from naiveté to profanity and back again. But it's the beguiling performances from the three young children that are really captivating, and it's their sense of the comic and the tragic elements of their predicament that gives the film its enjoyable energy. A real treat.

May 9, 2003

By Don Houston

Picture:The picture was presented in 2.35:1 ratio Anamorphic Widescreen and looked very detailed with a multitude of textures. There was obviously a lot of thought that went into the composition of the movie on a technical basis and I noticed very few problems that weren't related to conscious decisions on the part of Director Ayouch.

Sound: The audio was in Arabic with English subtitles in a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. For the most part, this aspect of the movie was also very clear and crisp.

Final Thoughts: For all the diminished hopes of the children involved with this movie and the stark contrast between the background they suffered through and what I'm used to, I thought the movie was immensely enjoyable. There was little or no attempt to portray the leads as completely sympathetic and that only added to the reality of the message. The larger message, for me at least, concerned the disposable nature of lives in society and even in a rich country like ours, it's a problem. I highly recommend this one to fans of foreign cinema and I'll be looking for future efforts by this director (and company).