Aicha: A Finespun Tragedy and its Incidental, Inescapable Villain

Sanaa el Alaoui’s 26-minute drama Aicha makes her a director to watch. A fractured, intricate narrative about a girl who dies and more so about the mother who wraps her in funeral shroud, Aicha takes folklore and mystical practices to show the present face of a very old story: the butchering of women at the hands of men. 

There is the past, the daughter’s birth; the mother (Hind Dafer) cuts the cord herself. There is what we think is the present: the mother grooms and bathes the daughter (Manal Bennani) while she recites her lessons for an exam the next day. There is another time yet, ostensibly severed from the linear plot, existing in a plane of its own. Loud, percussive music; singing and chanting; a dancing body; a blank faced goat. And then there are the crisp blue visions of the world through the daughter’s eyes, seen through an old super 8 camera, also detached from the plot. A tender dream. While these separate threads, like coins, are still in the air, tragedy is held at bay. And some coins are so shiny, you don’t want them to land. 

The mother is bathing her teenage daughter in the present, a ritual that has clearly been followed through the years. Even suffused with vague dread, it is easy to forget the ominous end that the larger narrative is building towards when the construction of the characters’ bond includes fractals of play, conflict, and love, that evince a history of belonging. They argue about the future and attempt silence about the past. Both, interestingly, are tied to the father. 

Aicha, titled after the Moroccan mythological figure who lives near water sources and kills men,is increasingly rewarding with each successive viewing, and not only because of its non-linearity. The beach sequence is exemplary for its cinematography and editing, and especially for its shock of animation. Dafer and Bennani are unforgettable both together and apart.

The threads begin their convergence, the sunny beach falls into place in the story while Aicha Kandicha mutely watches: the daughter becomes tangled in and takes on the fates of various animals. A dead lamb. Fish. And that goat who has haunted the narrative from the beginning. 

Watch Aicha Short Film Trailer