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The subgenre of “ambitious outsider teacher who is determined to inspire a ragtag group of disenchanted students” is well-worn, to put it mildly. Yet when the formula works its works well. Enter Casablanca Beats, written (with the collaboration of Maryam Touzani) and directed by Nabil Ayouch. It concerns Anas (Anas Basbousi), a former rapper with a gig at the local arts center in Casablanca. He teaches hip-hop to a diverse group of underprivileged students, bonding them together in the process. Each student is forced to confront repressive traditions in Morocco and challenge the status quo, debating the lengths to which they will rebel—be it through their lyrics, dress, or otherwise.

“Young as I am I feel like an old man / I see the future as black as my skin,” raps Ismail (Ismail Adouab), while Amina (Amina Kannan) is pulled out of class after her conservative parents learn that they are being taught hip-hop.

“Casablanca Beats” was reviewed by TheWrap out of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Director Nabil Ayouch’s “Casablanca Beats” wears its narrative trappings ever so lightly. If the film’s bookends prime the viewer for an inspiration teacher drama, a kind of “Dead Poets Society” or “School of Rockablanca” about an unconventional prof helping his students at a community arts center find their voice, there’s both more and less to it than that.

Less in the sense that the film is not at all plot-heavy, with neither the teacher, one-time rapper Anas (played by real-life rapper Anas Basbousi), nor his students, who also play characters that share their real names, ever taking the lead. But what “Casablanca Beats” forgoes in conventional narrative it more than makes up for in filmic form, charging forward as a nonstop blitz of lyrics, language, movement and music.

It is, in other words, a world cinema hip-hop musical,...

"Hip-hop Is an art form, ma'am." Kino Lorber has revealed an official US trailer for an indie film from France & Morocco titled Casablanca Beats, which first premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival last year. This received pretty much nothing but negative reviews from everyone who dared to see through it. The film is a Moroccan hip hop musical that rips off School of Rock and sets it in the city of Casablanca instead. Anas, a former rapper, is employed in a cultural centre. Encouraged by their new teacher, the students will try to free themselves from the weight of traditions to live their passion and express themselves through hip hop culture. Starring rapper Anas Basbousi, plus an ensemble of kids: Ismail Adouab, Zineb Boujemaa, Meryem Nekkach, Nouhaila Arif, Abdelilah Basbousi, Mehdi Razzouk, Amina Kannan, Samah Baricou. I saw this in Cannes and was hoping it would be good fun, but...

Nabil Ayouch’s grittily authentic tale of a rapper turned teacher helping his students find their creative voices is a class act

The Arabic title of Franco-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s empowering hip-hop fable translates loosely as “rise your voice”, while in France, where the film competed for the Cannes Palme d’Or, it’s known as Haut et fort ­– “high and loud”. Both monikers perfectly capture the vibrant spirit of this stirring street musical, described by its creator as arising out of “the desire to make a film to give voice to young people”. On one level it’s a patchwork of popular cinematic tropes, combining the strength-through-music themes of films as diverse as 8 Mile and School of Rock with the inspirational classroom formats of everything from Blackboard Jungle to Dead Poets Society. But there’s also a strong whiff of the discursive politics of Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom,...

Updated on October 19, 2021 with new additions.

The American Film Institute announced today the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, which includes Sony Pictures Classics’ “Parallel Mothers,” written and directed by Academy Award winner Pedro Almodóvar and starring the beloved Spanish auteur’s longtime muse Penélope Cruz. The film will receive a red carpet premiere at the historic Tcl Chinese Theatre on Saturday, November 13. Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” has also been added, and will screen at the Tcl Chinese Theatre on Thursday, November 11.

Other additions to the lineup include buzzy festival titles such as Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket,” Nadav Lapid’s “Ahed’s Knee,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car,” and Apichatpong Weerakethakul’s Tilda Swinton starrer “Memoria.”

The full lineup joins the previously announced world premiere of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s feature directorial debut, “Tick Tick Boom”. The Netflix feature is based on the autobiographical...

Director Nabil Ayouch brings heart and energy to the Cannes Film Festival competition with Casablanca Beats (Haut Et Fort), a story of arts students in the titular Moroccan city. Former rapper Anas (a charismatic Anas Basbousi) takes a job at a cultural center in a working-class part of town, and tries to teach a mixed group of kids and teens to rap.

With a style that’s questioning and confrontational but fostering, Anas fits firmly into the inspirational teacher category. His students respond enthusiastically, taking turns to perform and bringing their problems and politics into the classroom. Tensions arise, but the tone is generally upbeat in this simple but likable musical drama that’s based on the experiences of the director, who founded his own arts school for young people.

Like Anas, the young cast are playing versions of themselves, and bring their talents for rap, singing and dance to striking performance scenes.

“You have to change it because you didn’t choose it.” The defiant mantra that evolves over the course of Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s scrappy but heartfelt hip-hop street-musical “Casablanca Beats,” his third time in Cannes but first time in competition, could be a rallying cry for any youth activism group, anywhere in the world. But it’s the specificity of the setting, in the music room of an embattled Casablanca arts center, where a motley collection of local adolescents bond, bicker and brag through the medium of hip-hop, that gives Ayouch’s film the buzz of real-life resistance emerging in real time, demonstrating how music builds into a movement.

This is filmmaking as celebration and also intervention — in casting the center’s real attendees as fictionalized versions of themselves, Ayouch is not just telling the story of the notorious Casablanca neighborhood of Sidi Moumen that he, as a longtime resident of the city,...

Casablanca Beats is first Moroccan film to play in Cannes Competition since 1962.

Wild Bunch International (Wbi) has boarded sales on French-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s Casablanca Beats ahead of its world premiere in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in July.

The film follows a group of youngsters living in the Casablanca slum district of Sidi Moumen as they participate in a workshop encouraging them to express themselves through hip-hop music and dance.

It was shot in Casablanca’s Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen (The Stars of Sidi Moumen) cultural centre, which Ayouch created in 2014 with novelist Mahi Binebine.