Moumen Smihi, Girls and Swallows/ Les hirondelles: Les cris de jeunes filles des hirondelles
Morocco 2008, 80 min
The second in the trilogy of films devoted to the young Tanjawi (Tangerian), Mohamed-Larbi Salmi. Girls and Swallows restricts itself again to a succession of small stories found across the medina and ville nouvelle of Tangier, as Larbi experiences American and French pop culture, his own polymorphous nascent sexuality, and the different world views offered by his religious and secular educations. Starting from these small narratives, the film opens out onto much bigger questions about the relationship of the sacred and sacrilegious, religion and politics, gender roles, sexuality, and freedom of thought within Arab-Islamic societies.
Film programme notes by Peter Limbrick