Moroccan

The first time that DYSTINCT ever attended a soccer match was in Qatar to watch his beloved Morocco beat Spain in the Round of 16 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It just so happened that his track “Ghazali” — a fun love song with Belgian artist Bryan MG, featuring a strumming guitar infused with a fresh spin on Moroccan chaabi music — served as the victory song for Morocco each time they won. “I stayed and I saw everything with my own eyes there,” a jovial DYSTINCT recalls over Zoom from his hotel room in Côte…

Archaeologists in Morocco have unearthed more than 80 human footprints dating back around 100,000 years and believed to be the oldest in North Africa.The footprints, probably left by five Homo sapiens, including children, were discovered on the coast of Larache, a city 90 kilometres (55 miles) south of Tangier, by archaeologists from Morocco, Spain, France, and Germany."This group (of Homo sapiens) was crossing the beach towards the sea, probably in search of food and shellfish," Anass Sedrati, curator at the…

Images of some of the hominin tracks in Larache. (a) Two tracks side by side at the bottom of the photo, which also depicts a ground control point (checkered cardboard) for differential GPS surveying. (b) Two cross trackways and photography for 3D footprint modeling. (c) to (g) Detailed view of some footprints. White Scale bars = 20 cm. Credit: Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-52344-5 An international team of…

There’s a claustrophobic, smothering love between sex worker Fatimah-Zahra (Aicha Tebbae) and her teenage son Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji), both forced to live on the unforgiving periphery of Morocco’s conservative society. It’s the kind of close but fractious relationship that comes from being a self-contained, self-sufficient family unit – mother and son are constantly on the move, fleeing debts, disgrace or the scandal that seems to trail after Fatimah-Zahra like a cheap perfume. But now they are out of options, and,…

Halim (Saleh Bakri) is more than a tailor. At the traditional shop in a Moroccan medina that he runs with his ailing wife Mina (Lubna Azabal), he works lovingly and painstakingly, hand-embroidering silks so exquisitely fine they are like wearing air. And in a way, this delicate, precise, time-consuming approach is mirrored in director Maryam Touzani’s film-making, with its focus on tiny details, the fleeting glance, an almost imperceptible brush of skin against skin. It’s a gentle piece of Arabic-language storytelling,…

This tender and sad drama should come with the opposite of a content warning: a reassuring note at the start to explain that no physical harm or public humiliation will come to the gay men whose story we are about to watch. It’s set in Morocco where homosexuality is a criminal offence, and for the first half an hour I assumed the emotional brace position, convinced it would end in arrest or worse for its lead character. But instead, the film’s director Maryam Touzani had put together a gentle, complex film: a love story…

PARIS —  A court in Paris convicted Moroccan singer Saad Lamjarred of rape and assault charges Friday and sentenced him to six years in prison. The 37-year-old Lamjarred, who is famous on the Arab pop music scene, had been on trial on charges of aggravated rape and assault since Monday. A six-member jury and three magistrates spent seven hours deliberating before the singer was found guilty of raping a French woman at a luxury hotel on the Champs-Elysees in October 2016 while he was under the influence of alcohol and…

French Montana continues to show love to his home country.The 38-year-old rapper returned Wednesday with “Morocco,” an anthemic record celebrating the national soccer team’s historic World Cup run. The song coincided with the country’s semi-finals match against France. Though Morocco was ultimately defeated 0-2, the game was still a proud moment for Montana and other Moroccans, as it marked the first time an African nation made it to the final four.“My head still gassed how far we came lol,” French wrote on Instagram. “No…

Moroccans scrambled on Friday to get seats on the seven additional flights that state carrier Royal Air Maroc (RAM) has announced to help soccer fans get to Qatar for the World Cup quarter-final against Portugal.Morocco, the last African country left in the tournament and the first Arab country to ever reach the quarter-finals, has been gripped by excitement at the team’s World Cup performance, with victories over highly ranked Spain and Belgium.A source at Morocco’s soccer federation said it had agreed with RAM that fans…

Cameron Diaz has reflected on an incident in the Nineties where she may have unwittingly been used as a drug mule.In an episode of Hillary Kerr’s Second Life podcast, Diaz told a story about how, before she started acting, she had moved to Paris to pursue a modelling career.Diaz explained how, while she had made money in the US as a catalogue model, in Paris she couldn’t get any work.“I got like one job but really I think I was like a mule carrying drugs to Morocco – I swear to God,” she said.Diaz explained that, in one…