SOFIA

“Sofia” (Morocco, 2018) by Meryem Benm’Barek begins at a family dinner in Casablanca. Sofia, twenty years old, from a respectable middle-class household, has denied her pregnancy until the last moment and gives birth that same evening. Her cousin Lena, a medical student, takes her to a clinic. There she is given 24 hours to produce the father’s papers – otherwise the police will be called, since sex outside marriage is a criminal offence in Morocco. Sofia names a man: Omar, a young man from a working-class district. The families meet, and the question of who is saving whom shifts from hour to hour.

In her debut, Benm’Barek tells less of a scandal than of class relations hiding behind morality, sober, in eighty minutes, without music. The film screened in Cannes in 2018 in the Un Certain Regard section and received the award for best screenplay there. It was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2018.

Shown at the 2018 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2018 · Film Archive