Rebels with a cause: youth, globalisation and postcolonial agency in Moroccan cinema

Abstract

Moroccan filmmakers have chronicled social change and youth's quest for postcolonial agency since the early 1990s. This article examines the representation of Moroccan youth on screen through a close analysis of two recent films on the alternative cultural scene in Casablanca at the turn of the twenty-first century. I will explore how Farida Benlyazid and Abderrahim Mettour's documentary Casanayda! (2007) and Ahmed Boulane's feature film The Satanic Angels (2007) unveil youth's search for historical agency in Moroccan society in the years leading up to the mass protests of 2011 across North Africa. Focusing on each film's articulation of the postcolonial subjectivity of young Moroccans through a realist aesthetic, the article situates Moroccan youth's quest for agency within the evolution of Casablanca under neoliberal globalisation, since the 1980s. The chosen films foreground the agency of youth through a focus on their alternative constructions of postcolonial subjectivity in a cultural scene that marries local and global influences in the street, on stage and on screen. What is ultimately reclaimed on the screen is not only urban space for an age group, but also the space of justice for an entire society.

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