Lubna Azabal, Saleh Bakri, Ayoub Massioui
Writer-director Maryam Touzani’s follow-up to her acclaimed 2019 debut Adam, The Blue Caftan is a rich, complex, slow-burn drama that screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year.
Halim (Saleh Bakri) and Mina (Lubna Azabal) run a caftan shop in the historic Salé medina, producing exquisitely finished hand-sewn garments. Married for some time, their union nevertheless contains a secret which must be kept quiet in a strictly conservative country like Morocco, and when new circumstances (including the arrival of a young apprentice) arise, so too do new emotional challenges that threaten to upset the careful calibration of their lives.
Crafted with elegant economy, Touzani’s film is sensual, thoughtful and intensely moving, navigating the melancholy of the film’s central situations with a keen and authentic eye for physical and emotional details and the intricacies of individual relationships. Brilliantly acted, it’s an overwhelmingly tender character study and an investigation into a country’s relationship with tradition and modernity.
