Films in transition: the rhetorical embodiment of the Years of Lead in Moroccan cinema (2000-2018)

This article focusses on Moroccan films that thematize the socially repressive period of authoritarian regime known as the 'Years of Lead'. The general objective is to determine their rhetorical embodiment as it pertains to the apparatus of state violence and to identify activist possibilities that resonate with the artistic form of cinema. The 18 surveyed films have been chosen from a total census of 367 recorded in the official Moroccan Cinematographic Center's (Centre Cinématographique Marocain; CCM) catalogue and have been explored by locating their significance in the intersection between rhetoric and collective memory. The methodology has been complemented by conducting semi-structured interviews with fifteen professionals of the world of cinema and literature. The main hypothesis initially assumed that the cinema about the Years of Lead would be rhetorically permutated by the representation of prison life and torture. However, the findings show that films about torture are a minority. The films mostly consider post-prison life, probably in response to the need to overcome the pain and trauma left behind. However, there is little indictment so far of the past regime and there are many under-represented topics, such as the realities of the tortures or the torture tools and methods. The use of symbolic and metaphorical narration is, however, a constant.