Free Men

A young teenager, for school, is required to make a presentation on his native country, Morocco.

Reda, summoned to accompany his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca, complies reluctantly - as he preparing for his baccalaureat and, even more important, has a secret love relationship. The trip across Europe in a broken-down car is also the departure of his father: upon arrival in Mecca, both Reda and his father are not the characters they were at the start of the movie. Avoiding the hackneyed theme of the return to the homeland, the film uses the departure to renew a connection between two generation.

Charly wishes a bicycle with all his heart for Christmas. Therefore his disappointment is bigger, when his father presents him a self-built plane...

What is beautiful about adolescence is that it is a time when everything is still possible. The four main characters are each conditioned by their background and environment, but they refuse to accept any predestination and to fight it. Expelled from schools, spurned by lovers, confined by identity these youngsters just keep on running, frustrated and in flames. Lonely hearts, intoxicated by music and alcohol, by the heat of minds and bodies, burn to ashes.

10-year-old Mica, lives with his mother and sick father in a slums near Meknes. He starts apprenticing for his father’s friend, a handyman in a tennis club in Casablanca. After going through humiliation and even being physically abused, Mica starts to understand his situation, and does everything in his power to change it.

Six stories, six films that follow on from each other; this is a glance at the childhood of renowned directors whose style has marked the history of film. A group of young directors focus their cameras on the story of these filmmakers, these childhood stories that sometimes shape an entire life and thus shed light on their cinematic works. The stories overlap to merge into one film about childhood, filled with emotional wounds, frustrations and encounters.