For Bread Alone

At a glance

For Bread Alone, is a 2004 Moroccan movie, directed by Mohamed Rachid Benhadj, and starring Saïd Taghmaoui, Fayçal Zeghadi, Billal Lahsini, with a runtime of 97 minutes. Content rating: R.

Overview

For Bread Alone is a Moroccan biographical drama based on the landmark autobiography of Mohamed Choukri, one of the most significant literary voices to emerge from North Africa in the twentieth century. The film portrays Choukri's childhood with unsettling candour: a life lived in absolute poverty and illiteracy, shaped by a violently abusive father and a mother whose quiet endurance made her the family's sole anchor. Far from a tale of redemption through suffering, the film is a raw, unfiltered testimony to the formative power of deprivation — the conditions that would eventually give rise to one of Arabic literature's most distinctive and celebrated prose styles.

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