Two documentaries by Arab women directors have jointly won this year’s L’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award for best documentary at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters and The Mother of All Lies from first-time Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir were announced as this year’s best documentary winners at a ceremony in Cannes on Saturday.Both films use experimental cinematic techniques to explore stories of trauma from their home countries.
In The Mother of All Lies, El Moudir explores her family’s history and the stories and lies told surrounding the upheaval and violence of the 1981 Bread Riots in Casablanca.
With no archive footage or even photographs, to draw on, she painstakingly recreates, from memory, her family’s old apartment and the old Casablanca neighborhood in the form of a miniature set on a soundstage, with figurines to represent her family members.
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