The Damned Don't Cry

Fyzal Boulifa's (Lynn + Lucy) striking film about the perils of falling foul of community and social expectations.

Selim and his mother Fatima-Zahra live in close quarters, in a state of poverty. Having grown up without a father, he and his mother are socially marginalised; he’s bound to his mother, but resents her and offers his love with petulance. When a trip to her family village reveals troubling secrets, a rift opens that will see them try to establish their own independence but tests their fragile love.

Moroccan-British filmmaker Boulifa offers a glimpse of what is hidden within private spaces – guarded secrets, sexuality, shame, hope and a desire for more than cultural expectations allow. Employing a bold colour palette, Boulifa delivers an atmospheric domestic drama that recalls, in all the best ways, Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Transgressive, tragic and beautiful.