Moroccan Documentary Explores Jewish Heritage Through Music on 2M Tonight

The new documentary by Moroccan director Kamal Hachkar, "In Your Eyes, I See My Country" is the heartfelt cry of Moroccan Jews who, even settled in Israel, are attached to their roots. "I had understood while making my first film Tinghir Jerusalem that I would not be done with this Judeo-Moroccan theme. My second film continues to explore this Jewish part of Moroccan identity through the figures of the third generation," explains Kamal Hachkar.

By taking the initiative to highlight the Judeo-Moroccan heritage, the director primarily seeks to recreate cultural ties between the younger generations. "It is also a way to defy the fatality of the great History that separated our parents," confides the director. The documentary film brings together four central characters with whom he explores this rediscovered Judeo-Moroccan memory. Neta Elkayam is an artist, singer and painter living in Jerusalem. Her father was born in Tinghir and her mother in Casablanca.

She confesses that there are many young people like her living in Israel who are thirsty to know their origins, their history. For her, one feels diminished when one lives without knowing one’s whole history. Amit Haï Cohen, a self-taught pianist living in Jerusalem, shares this view. He was born to a mother from Tizgui, a Berber village near Ouarzazate, and a father from Djerba, Algeria. He explains in the documentary that sometimes he feels the desire to return to Morocco, where it all began.

In addition to Amit and Neta who grew up in Netivot, Israel, two other characters appear in this documentary: Ahmed Hachkar, the director’s father. He was born in Tinghir, as well as Fanny Mergui, born in Casablanca. After many years abroad, Fanny Mergui has settled back in Morocco and is now fighting for the preservation of this memory of coexistence.

As for Ahmed Hachkar, settled in France, he keeps deep in his heart the hope of returning to live in Morocco. He specifies that "most of the Moroccans who emigrated to Israel came alone, without family, and keep deep within them a nostalgia mixed with a kind of melancholy". I See My Country in Your Eyes, this Sunday from 9pm on 2M.