Ali Zaoua
(DVD)

Originally produced as a motion picture in 2000.

"March 2003"--Disc label.

Special features: Ali Zaoua trailer; biographies of director & actors; short film The architecture of reassurance / HKM Films ; Mike Mills (1999, ca. 24 min.).

A foreign film (Morocco, Tunisia, France, Belgium).

Associate director, Mohamed El Meziane ; photography, Vincent Mathias ; editing, Jean-Robert Thomann ; music, Krishna Levy.

Mou?ni?m Kbab, Mustapha Hansali, Hicham Moussoune, Abdelhak Zhayra, Said Taghmaoui, Amal Ayouch, Mohamed Majd.

"Architecture of assurance" weaves interviews into the story of a young girl who one afternoon goes exploring in a suburban California neighborhood, where she is utterly convinced that the people she spies on have happier lives than she does.

A group of street urchins living in the hard streets of Casablanca lead lives filled with violence, begging, and indifference. Their bond of friendship and family is cut short when Ali is senselessly killed at the beginning of the film by a blow to the head by a rival gang. His friends decide not to report his death to the police, who would have the boy buried in a potter's field. Instead they decide to give him a worthy burial, to bury Ali on the private island he so often dreamed of.

DVD format.

In Arabic and French with English subtitles.