Horses of God

The shanty town of Sidi Moumen, Morocco isn’t exactly rife with opportunities for brothers Yachine and Hamid (real-life siblings Abdelhakim and Abdelilah Rachid): they’re caught between aggressive peers, bullying bosses and prison. Standing apart, offering spirituality, fraternity and badass fighting skills, are the Islamic fundamentalists. And so, two terrorists are nurtured into being. Told starkly across the course of a decade, Nabil Ayouch’s feature is adapted from Mahi Binebine’s novel about the 2003 Casablanca suicide bombings. Though tragically plausible, the brothers’ transformation into ‘martyrs’ has an inevitability that robs it of tension. Yet the depictions of these characters’ bleak circumstances possess an authenticity that cannot be ignored.