Ali Zaoua

Ali Zaoua
Directed by	Nabil Ayouch
Produced by	Etienne Comar Jean Cottin Antoine Voituriez
Written by	Nabil Ayouch Nathalie Saugeon
Starring	Mounim Kbab Abdelhak Zhayra Hicham Moussoune Amal Ayouch Mustapha Hansali
Music by	Krishna Levy
Cinematography	Renaat Lambeets Vincent Mathias
Editing by	Jean-Robert Thomann
Distributed by	Arab Film Distribution (USA)
Release date(s)	September 8, 2000
Running time	90 mins.
Country	Morocco Tunisia France Belgium
Language	Arabic, French
IMDb • Allmovie

Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets is a 2000 Moroccan crime drama film that tells the story of some homeless boys. It was awarded in the 2000 Stockholm Film Festival and in the 2000 Amiens International Film Festival.

1 Plot
2 Miscellanea
3 Awards
4 External links

Plot

Kwita (Mounim Kbab), Omar (Mustapha Hansali), Boubker (Hicham Moussoune) and Ali Zaoua (Abdelhak Zhayra) are homeless street boys in Casablanca. In a television interview Ali says that he ran away from home when he heard his mother say that she wanted to sell his eyes for profit. An old fisherman (Mohamed Majd) has given him a job as sailor; they will leave soon. Ali has dreams of living on an island far from Casablanca, where there are two suns.

However, before he is picked up by the fisherman Ali is killed by gang members. His friends hide his body, and vow to bury him "like a prince." Kwita is the boy who masterminds the idea, but his resolve doesn't always match his courage, so it's Omar who works his way into Ali's old house, where Ali's mother (Amal Ayouch) works as a prostitute. Just finished with a customer, she says that Ali lied in the interview, and she shows Omar Ali's nice room.

Before the trio's quest is over, Kwita meets a girl he falls for and visits a cemetery where his lack of religious training ("I went to a mosque once") is criticized; Omar briefly returns to his former gang, which instigated Ali's murder; and Boubker -- the smallest and most vulnerable of the three -- threatens to kill himself but recovers his sense of self and helps the old fisherman on his boat.