Nabil Ayoush celebrates (and mourns) the traditional folk music of Aita through the courage of his protagonist Touda, a single mother and aspiring Shikeha (traditional Moroccan female performer), who is trying to pursue her art and find a decent and safe life together with her hearing-impaired son.
Touda, played by the magnetic Nisren Erradi, is the impoverished daughter of a peasant couple living in a Morocco we don’t see in tourist brochures. Throughout the film, her goal is to establish herself as a credible Shikeha, an art of vocal poetry perfected by female performers at weddings, gatherings, and carnivals. In many cases, the performers are stigmatized for singing.
Aita literally means crying, but the performance allows the singer to express herself in a celebratory manner, which ranges from romance, religious chanting and sadness to euphoria. In the opening credits, Ayoush gives context of what a Shikeha is, enough to introduce a non-Middle Eastern audience to the music genre being performed.
As the story slowly unfolds, Touda is constantly reminded (mostly by men but also by her fellow female singers and dancers) that she is not an artist, but an entertainment number and a dancing body for the pleasure of men. Even her brother, who is ashamed of her, calls her a Shikeha to humiliate her.
The cost of performing in male-dominated spaces and depending on money coming mainly from men at weddings, parties, or clubs, is being a constant target for unwanted sexual advances. This reaches a peak in the first scene when Touda is chased through a dark forest in her traditional clothes by a group of drunken men, who end up gang-raping her. She doubles up on toughness, yet continues to celebrate her femininity. Despite these harassments, she resists verbally and physically, and teaches her deaf-mute son Yassine (Joud Chamihy) how to fight off bullies at school.
In the impoverished district where she lives, there are no schools for children with special needs. Nor is there any prospect of her becoming a proper Shikeha. So she sets her eyes on Casablanca, to find a suitable school for her son and pursue her dreams. Talented as she is, it doesn’t take her long to get a job as a pop singer in a cabaret, where she is constantly reminded that she is no Um Kalthoum and that she has to play nice and entertain the male audience who are not here just for a drink and a song.
There is a symbolism in Touda’s attempt to survive financially, socially, and sometimes physically by preserving of the almost vanishing art of Aita. Like several genres of traditional art in the Middle East and North Africa (the most famous being belly dancing), it is either commercialized, sexualised, or brought back to life for entertaining bourgeois audiences, hence losing many aspects of its authenticity.
Written by Ayoush and fellow filmmaker Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan), the plot of Everybody Loves Touda is sensually expressed in Erradi’s whirling, energetic performance, and visually told by the brilliant, soft camerawork of Virginie Surdej, expressing the character’s ups and downs.
The end of the film might disappoint admirers of the easily digested narrative of a brown Arab woman oppressed by men who finally triumphs and overcomes all the challenges, or ends up dead. Ayoush plays against this kind of classic melodrama. Instead he puts her firmly in charge of her own sexuality and pleasure, making for a brilliant and original conclusion.
Director: Nabil Ayouch
Screenwriters: Nabil Ayouch, Maryam Touzani
Cast: Nisrin Erradi, Joud Chamihy, Jalila Talemsi, Lahcen Razzougui, El Moustafa Boutankite, Abdellatif Chaouqi, Khalil Oubaaqa
Producers: Nabil Ayouch, Amine Benjelloun, Sebastian Schelenz, Katrin Pors, Mikkel Jersin, Eva Jakobsen, Marleen Slot, Elisa Fernanda Pirir
Cinematography: Virginie Surdej
Editing: Nicolas Rumpl
Production design: Eve Martin
Music: Kristian Eidnes Andersen, Flemming Nordkrog
Production company: Les Films du Nouveau Monde, Ali n’ Productions, Snowglobe, Viking Film, Stær, Velvet Films
World sales: MK2
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Premiere)
In Arabic, French
102 minutes
