Beiruting News

A film festival is one of the few places where you can take a trip around the world in the course of a day, without ever leaving a mall multiplex.

The trip to Tangier came courtesy of Laila Marrakchi's outstanding Rock the Casbah. Featuring a pan-Arabian cast of talented actresses, it could almost be seen as a Moroccan version of August: Osage County, without quite as much acidic humor.

The film is actually narrated by the dead patriarch (a playful Omar Sharif), whose sudden death brings his three daughters together for the first time in a while for the funeral. Inevitably, old resentments and secrets begin to surface in fascinating ways. There's even that little unexpected splash of incest, just like in Tracy Letts' Pulitzer-winning play.

The cast is superb, led by Hiam Abbass as the mother and including Lubna Azabal, Nadine Labaki and Morjana Alaoui as the daughters. The writing is sharp, witty and perceptive about the ways sisters deal with each other. Even as it's specific to its culture, it is universal in its story of family tensions exacerbated by a death in the family.