Mohammed & Paul - Once upon a Time in Tangier (2025)

Name: Mohammed & Paul - Once upon a Time in Tangier
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2026-03-10T17:39:39+01:00
Rating: 3

Documentary | 93 minutes

3,00 2 votes

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Genre: Documentary

Duration: 93 minuten

Country: Netherlands

Directed by: Nordin Lasfar

Stars: Paul Bowles and Mohammed Mrabet

This movie is not available on US streaming services.

Mohammed & Paul - Once upon a Time in Tangier plot

For filmmaker Nordin Lasfar, who grew up in the Netherlands to Moroccan parents, author Paul Bowles once opened the door to literature and the stories from his ancestral land. In the 1960s and 1970s, Tangier served as a base for Western artists and writers of the Beat Generation, including Bowles. In those circles, Mohammed Mrabet, a fisherman's son and storyteller in the Moroccan oral tradition, became a central figure. Although illiterate, he gained wider fame through Bowles's writing and publication of his stories. In a context where creativity and a liberal morality went hand in hand with colonial inequality and racism, a complex relationship developed between the two.

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mrklm

11752 messages
10118 votes

10 March at 17:39

Mohammed Mrabet is a famous illiterate Moroccan storyteller who had his stories written down by the renowned American author Paul Bowles. Bowles died in 1999, so Lasfar relies on Mrabet and Bowles' surviving friends and acquaintances to investigate the relationship between the narrator and the author. Mrabet is repeatedly accused of fraud and is also ambiguous about the reliability of his account. This contradiction arouses interest, but the use of AI makes it very difficult for the viewer to form an opinion. It's interesting as a document of a time and place with remarkable (sexual) morals, but the relationship between Mrabet and Bowles leaves many questions unanswered.