Pastry once again plays a key role in a film: Adam, the debut feature of Maryam Touzani, director, screenwriter, and actress from Tangier. The film tells the story of Abla, a widow and mother of an eight-year-old girl, who runs a modest traditional Moroccan pastry shop in the Medina of Casablanca (Morocco), and Samia, a young pregnant woman who knocks on her door looking for work and a roof to sleep under.

This moving and feminine film, which was presented in 2019 in the official section of Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and at the Seminci in Valladolid, was selected at the Oscars 2020 as the best foreign language film.

Focusing on the pastry field, Touzani explains that she wanted to include the rziza recipe in the film because “I grew up eating rziza, an old traditional pastry made by hand in a very laborious way. Today they are hardly found except during Ramadan and manufactured in an industrial way. For me, bringing the rziza to this film is a way to pay tribute to it and to pay tribute to all those things that constitute our identity and that we are slowly losing. For me, the rziza is also a way of pausing on things that I consider important, of not being afraid to take the necessary time”. She also adds that “Adam is a film of ambiences, of sensations, where image and sound enter the bodies of these two women in the same way that their hands intermingle while kneading. The work of kneading the dough is something that I have chosen to film in an organic, sensual, almost carnal way, because for me it is an integral part of the characters. Food and its preparation are a key element in the encounter between these three generations of women ”.

Due to the world health crisis, its release will vary depending on the country.