Downton Abbey: A New Era film review

A second big-screen helping of Julian Fellowes’ drama

This “hip-hop-flavoured coming-of-age drama” is about a group of Moroccan teenagers learning to question “the repressive attitudes and adult hypocrisies they see all around them”, said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman. The film is set in an arts centre in a deprived suburb of Casablanca, where former rapper Anas (Anas Basbousi) has been employed to teach hip-hop to local youths. He’s an inspirational teacher, but his tough-love methods don’t go down well with the centre’s administrators. Director Nabil Ayouch then passes the mic to his charismatic pupils (played by non-professional actors), whom we see learning “to use rap to articulate who they are while negotiating complicated home lives, religious obligations and gender inequality”.

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