Valérie K. Orlando : Depicting and Documenting Violence against Women in the Contemporary Counter - Narratives of Moroccan Film

This article argues that films and documentaries made in the last decade by filmmakers working in Morocco challenge the State‘s “hagiography”; its official narrative of exceptionalism written by the monarchy to stand as uncontested truth. Since the dawn of the new millennium and the ascendance of Mohamed VI to the throne, this narrative often exaggerates the improvement in recent years of women‘s actual sociocultural, political and economic enfranchisement in Moroccan society. The documentary 475 (2013) by Nadir Bouhmouch challenges the positivism of the government‘s affirmation that it has ameliorated the lives of all women in Morocco. Equally important, the feature - length fiction film, Much Loved (2015) by Nabil Ayouch, serves to set the record straight on Violence Against Women (VAW) in a country where patriarchal tradition still takes precedence over women‘s overall societal enfranchisement.