By Nikoleta Morales
This year’s Oscars entry selection for Morocco is Everybody Loves Touda, directed by award-winning director Nabil Ayoud’s (Horses of God, Casablanca Beats). The movie’s plot centers around the beautiful and resilient Touda (Niarin Erradi) who dreams of becoming a Sheikha, a respected traditional Moroccan performer singing powerful lyrics of resistance and emancipation.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of MK2 Films
Touda performs every evening in local bars around the lustful men, while they objectify her, try to own her and even sexually assault her. But Touda’s dream is to leave her small village and move to Casablanca where she can be a Sheikha and provide a better future for her 9-year-old son.
The movie creates an excellent depiction of a tortured female artist and a single mother who is trying to fight for what she loves and who she loves, her singing career and her speech impaired son. Her character embodies power, independence, free spirit and strength. She doesn’t stop nor give up on life's challenges, the obstacles along the way, the hardships, the brutalities but she keeps going.
Her dream is to find a school that will accept her son and educate him, and she won’t let anyone including the school system tell her otherwise. Touda protects her son at all costs and even when she is hurting, tired, abused, and put down she makes him laugh and feel loved. She is driven by the force of nature and love that defies all odds. Her resilient nature and strong spirit inspire the viewers throughout the film as she faces adversity, abuse, poverty, judgment, objectification, and fights to find freedom to be who she believes she can be.
The viewer, especially women, can empathize with Touda. Some can even see parts of themselves and their journey in her character as mothers, as females, as artists. This is what makes this musical drama so powerful and relatable. She is wanted for her talent, her beauty, her appeal but also shamed, objectified and put down for the same reasons. In her journey to find herself and choose herself, she has to make tough choices and painful decisions that can affect her career and her son. Ayoud’s excellent acting skills and impersonation of Touda’s character dive us deeper into her inner turmoil world and her desire to escape it, be happy and become the singer and mother she believes she can be.
The film’s tone, musical nature and editing add more complexity and nuances to the character, which makes Touda’s journey painful and hard but also colorful and magical. The trauma that the main character experiences is a trauma that unfortunately many females can relate to. It is how she gets back up and continues to fight for her and her son that makes her a powerful character. She is an inspiring and relatable female character that shows the intensity of female strength and endurance. Touda doesn’t take no for an answer, she fights for what she wants and what she believes in.
Everybody Loves Touda premiered at this year’s Cannes Festival. The movie transports the viewer to the beautiful culture of Morocco and its traditional music and songs.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of MK2 Films
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