WOLFMOTHER

Director’s statement

Morocco’s number one industry is illegal. Nevertheless, for many young Moroccans, trafficking cannabis is the only refuge of scorned ambition, often the only way of reaching that taunting Spanish shoreline only 14 kilometres away. Wolfmother is equally inspired by real Tangerine drug lords and ancient Greek tragedy. I want to channel Moroccan realities into universal, cinematic, and subversive stories by claiming my right, as an African filmmaker, to mythology, imagination, and style. I believe in forging new forms from ancient ones. Wolfmother is a modern tragedy that uses an electric, slam-inspired modernisation of izran, the old art of Riffian war poems, as its Greek chorus. It’s a Western set in the Rif, its Mohawk-sporting, shotgun-wielding Hashishin army the fusion of Michael Mann’s Mohicans and Abdelkrim’s freedom fighters. It’s a Tangerine film noir, steeped in the city’s dimly lit back alleys and dive bars, where doom always looms in the background.