Mohammed & Paul - Once Upon a Time in Tangier

You cannot call Mohammed Mrabet, now almost 90 years old and from Tangier, a writer, because he cannot read or write, but he is a masterful storyteller. We would never have heard of him had he not befriended the famous writer/composer Paul Bowles in the 1960s, who lived in Tangier for much of his life, at that time a city where many Western artists felt at home. Bowles was impressed by Mrabet's storytelling skills and decided to write down the stories, resulting in fourteen books in which Mrabet talks about the social underclass in Morocco, interspersed with elements of magical realism.

In 2008, filmmaker Nordin Lasfar, who grew up in the Netherlands as the child of Moroccan parents, had already met Mrabet. At that time, Mrabet told him about his ambivalent relationship with Bowles, whom he considers both a friend and an enemy. This prompted Lasfar to make this film, a story full of interviews, archive footage, and atmospheric street impressions of Tangier.