Mohammed grew up in the shadow of his demanding and sometimes terrifying father. King Hassan also exercised illegal power to the fore and was feared for it. For a while it seemed as though he was destined to become an energetic modernizing king. But during his first few years in power, the makhsen seemed to have hemmed him in. The old desire to thumb his nose at authority returned.
Their return to rule is unequivocally bad for the country’s women and girls. But wholesale collapse has not come and some aspects of government have improved; it turns out threats of grotesque violence change behaviours. We investigate the curious case of Morocco’s absent king—and his unlikely mixed-martial-artist pals. And how the mobile phone has shaped cinema for half a century.
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