Fouad Is Not a Criminal: A Chaotic Morality
Words & moving image: Ziad Naitaddi
Published: September 2025
Created by Moroccan Amazigh artist Ziad Niataddi, Fouad Is Not a Criminal: A Chaotic Morality explores the thorny moral terrain of cultural piracy through Fouad, a DVD seller in Rabat’s medina who has spent two decades distributing arthouse cinema for less than a dollar per film. Through photography, found footage, and reflective prose, Niataddi questions the boundaries between criminality and service to the arts, arguing that Fouad, though legally classified as a pirate, operates as an essential curator and educator for Morocco’s film students and cinephiles alike.
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Loving Algeria: Choukri Mesli’s Riposte to Violence
Words: Sheyda Aisha Khaymaz
Published: August 2025
In Nanterre, France, where a young Maghribian, Nahel Merzouk, was killed by police in 2023, Choukri Mesli once lived in exile after fleeing Algeria’s civil war in 1994—yet another chapter in his life riddled with displacement. The Algerian painter’s sensuous female figures, rooted in ancient Saharan rock art, emerge as love letters to a homeland ravaged by centuries of violence, from colonial conquest to authoritarian rule. The article seeks to answer: What does it mean to love a place that has expelled you, and how does an artist respond to unrelenting brutality with beauty?
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