As part of the Cairo International Film Festival's official contest, the Moroccan film Taif Nizar (Nizar’s Spectrum), scripted and directed by Kamal Kamal, was screened on Monday, according to the news agencies.
The film is about the possibility that courts might make the wrong decision and sentence innocent people to death, despite evidence of their innocence.
Meanwhile, the judge, the decision maker, may also commit another crime prompted by emotional drives.
The film’s theme includes a political dimension related to the oppression by the Moroccan security authorities before the country became more democratic. These authorities oppressed people in an attempt to keep their actions secret under the cover of performing their duties, so that they would not be convicted.
The film portrays a judge reviewing a file of a suspect charged with murdering his wife and five of his children, then mutilating and burning their bodies. The public demand the death sentence, despite his denial of all accusations against him.
The judges become confused as a result of their suspicions over his involvement in the crime.
The film depicts a cold relationship between the judge who sticks to the law and his Syrian fine artist wife (played by the Syrian actress Lina Murad) who seeks in vein to make their relations warmer. The wife begins to show interest in her husband’s young colleague the fact that ignites jealousy in her husband. He starts in collaboration with his servant to watch and chase her particularly after she draws a cartoon picture for him while smoking a cigar in an anticipation of the future of her husband who does not smoke and who favors mind over emotions and human feeling.
Meanwhile the convicted man proves to be innocent through the human rights advocate, the prison physician, who works for the security agency. The criminal appears to be the doctor’s officer in charge who stands behind killing and torturing many prisoners and politicians during interrogations. He commits his crimes because the suspect refuses to make testimony in his favor so that he will be freed from the accusations of murder, torture and brutality against him after the announcement of democracy in the country.
The suspect keeps silent in order to protect his only daughter who survives the massacre because he knows that the majority of the security agencies leaders will stand with the officer in charge and kill her, should he tries to make himself innocent by showing the evidences he has. The death sentence against him is implemented despite his daughter’s certainty of her father’s innocence.
The crises between the judge, his wife and young colleague escalates due to his suspicion of a romantic relation between his wife and the young man. The judge storms his wife’s room but he does not find the young man, so he thinks that he hides inside a box in which his wife keeps her clothes. He buries the box without opening it in a signal by the director that the judge may commit an uncertain crime out of suspicion.
The film ends with the husband sitting in the garden and smoking the same way his wife draws him before the death sentence is implemented – Albawaba.com
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