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Casablanca Beats(Haut et fort)

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

France, Morocco · 2021
1h 41m
Director Nabil Ayouch
Starring Ismail Adouab, Nouhaila Arif, Samah Baricou, Abdelilah Basbousi
Genre Drama, Music

Former rapper Anas is hired to work at a cultural center in a working-class neighborhood of Casablanca. Encouraged by their new teacher, a group of young people begins exploring hip-hop and rap. But to live their passion, they must shake off the weight of tradition held up by their community.

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

80

TheWrap by Ben Croll

Casablanca Beats argues that the power of personal expression can turn the world on its head. And for a good spell, the film does just that.

70

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

Ayouch’s most personal feature film, it infects the audience with its passion and the unshakable belief that a person who has self-confidence and self-expression can really change society.

80

Slashfilm by Jason Gorber

Casablanca Beats drums its ideas loudly and effectively. The result is a boisterous and crowd-pleasing delight, showing a community with deep specificity that nonetheless speaks to the concerns of young people all over the world.

70

Variety by Jessica Kiang

It’s perhaps a little glib to make a choral event of a hip-hop musical when hip-hop is so much a medium for individual creative expression — for a single voice to speak its truth — but it’s hard to argue when the results are this energetic, this empowering and this irresistibly youthful.

80

CineVue by John Bleasdale

There’s no revolutionary moment of success in which the meanies are ousted and hip-hop declared godly. Music is like education in this: it’s all about the movement, not the destination.

60

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

It is all presented earnestly and engagingly, though self consciously, and if the political debates are unsolved, well, that could be because they are unsolved in real life. It’s certainly a heartening demonstration that new ideas can flourish in a religious society.

40

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Casablanca Beats just about gets by on restless teenage energy and its bustle of winning young faces. But it’s a new arrangement of a very familiar old song.

80

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

It is a film which celebrates empowerment and the exhilarating release of finding a voice and being heard.

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