WWW: What a Wonderful World

Unveiled, a season of films on More4 offering a fresh perspective on love and sex in the Arab World, continues with What a Wonderful World. Faouzi Bensaidi’s film, a sly comment on love and disillusion, is set in modern day Casablanca, where traffic cop Kenza supplements her income by charging her neighbours to use her mobile phone. One of them is Souad, an occasional prostitute who uses the service to receive client’s calls. One of her clients is Kamel who becomes intrigued by Kenza’s voice when she answers his calls and slowly they form a telephonic relationship based on love and loneliness. But Kamel is also a professional hit man and a phone hacker Hicham stumbles across his secret, putting himself in danger as he trails Kamel to his latest job and a shocking denouement. In French/Arabic with English subtitles., A stone-faced assassin falls for a tough traffic cop in director Faouzi Bensaidi’s inventive look at life in contemporary Casablanca. By day Kenza (Nezha Rahil) earns her keep by maintaining order on the streets, and by night she makes a few extra dollars by renting out her cell phone to neighbors who can’t afford a mobile of their own. Kenza’s best friend Souad (Fatima Attif) is a part-time prostitute whose best client is a lovelorn hit-man named Kamel (director Bensaidi) who receives his assignments via the internet. When his jobs are finished, Kamel calls Kenza’s cell phone as a means of arranging a date with Souad, but he and Kenza have formed a warm bond over the course of their calls, and he soon finds himself falling for the self-assured cop. The stage is eventually set for tragedy when a tech-savvy hacker named Hicham (El Mehdi Elaaroubi) stumbles across Kamel’s hit list and decides to make the trip to Rabat and see the trigger man’s handiwork in person.