Hounds

Hounds (2023)

Les Meutes

A father and son, live from day to day by carrying out petty crimes for the local mafia. Hired to kidnap a man and to deliver him across town seems simple enough until the man dies in the trunk of their car. What follows is a panicked after-hours odyssey with the police looking for them, the mafia expecting a live delivery, a dead body rotting in their trunk and they have no idea what awaits them next…

Date of release
2023-07-19
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (37)
Runtime
1h 34m
Genres
Crime, Thriller, Drama
Director
Kamal Lazraq

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $170.8K
  • Budget: €2M

Hounds, is a 2023 Moroccan crime drama film written and directed by Kamal Lazraq. Taking place over one night in Casablanca, it follows Hassan and Issam, an impoverished father-son duo, as they attempt to dispose of a body after a botched kidnapping. The film explores themes of survival, familial conflict, and moral quandaries against the backdrop of urban Morocco.

Production

Like many North African filmmakers, Lazraq cast non-professional actors to try to achieve an authentic and raw portrayal of the community in which he set the story. Abdellatif Masstouri, the film's leading actor, was working as a street-food vendor when he was approached for the role of Hassan.

In an interview by Tarik Khaldi for Cannes, Lazraq recalls how they discovered the actors who would play the lead roles in the film:I noticed Ayoub Elaïd (Issam, the son) in a photo. He made me think of Franco Citti in Accattone. I met him, I filmed him, he really gave off a Pasolini vibe. I kept looking and when I wanted to see Ayoub again, he'd disappeared. We looked for him and found him in his village.

Lazraq's motive for structuring the film over a single day and night was to intensify the viewer's connection to the story's events. This decision was also influenced by his earlier short film, Drari, which also unfolded over one night. Lazraq was drawn to the underground world of dog fights as a metaphor for survival and the challenges faced by marginalized individuals.

Hounds was shot in Casablanca. The storyline evolved during filming and editing, leading to significant rewrites. Lazraq favored improvised dialogue, though he acknowledged the need to rewrite certain scenes he was not satisfied with. The director, grappling with the challenges of filming mostly at night, described the experience as incredibly demanding.

Director of photography Amine Berrada stated that director Lazraq favored a documentary-style camera, which he described as 'deeply immersive', for this film, and that it was shot in sequence to prevent the non-professional actors from becoming disoriented.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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