IFFR REVIEW DAILY BIRDLAND

VERDICT: Revolution is coming in this intricate, densely layered vision of the burning of a forest and the girl who harnesses the technology of dissent.

Carmen Gray, January 26, 2023

A fire blazes through the forest and lights up the night sky around El Mansouria, the homestead near Tangier of the wealthy Bechtani clan. It’s not initially clear who set it, but the family suspects that it is the work of Bab Al Sama, an unscrupulous real estate developer intent on turning the land into a profitable construction zone, despite the ecological consequences. Birdland, screening in the Tiger Competition at Rotterdam, is the second feature-length fiction film of Moroccan director Leila Kilani, who more than a decade ago made Sur la Planche (2011), about women in Tangier factories trying to supplement their meagre incomes, and has made a number of documentaries about poverty, state violence and dissidence. Her latest film is an intricately woven vision of collapse and regeneration that blends the politically trenchant with the poetic and mystical. The spite and intrigue of family dynasty melodrama is a suspenseful hook, and is elevated by a wider cosmic perspective of esoteric connections, significances and signs, and the unstoppable forces of social revolution.

We see this enchanting and cursed world through the spectacled eyes (and the live-streamed footage she shoots on her phone, when it takes over the frame) of the youngest Bechtani, Lina (Ifham Mathet). She is rebellious like her father Anis (Mustafa Shimdat). He has blocked the family’s attempt to sell the estate, resorting to North African “habous” law, according to which he can stipulate his share must be put to good social use through a charitable foundation. He does not want to see the land taken from the slum-dwellers down the hill, or from the birds, who share just as much right to remain there as anyone. The impoverished locals have lived there for forty years, but do not possess ownership papers and the targeting of their very existence for erasure by corporate greed may be the final straw before they rise up.

Full Review. https://thefilmverdict.com/birdland/