Traitors

Actor Sean Gullette makes his directorial debut with this riveting tale of a struggling punk rocker in Morocco. Malika (Chaimae Ben Acha) lives at home in Tangier with her parents and younger sister. By day, she works as a telemarketer; by night, she fronts Traitors, an all-female punk band. Malika loses her job, but gains a producer, although she still has to find the money to pay for studio time in order to record a demo. Nothing she tries works until she meets Samir (Mourade Zeguendi), a wheelchair-bound kingpin who needs a courier. When Malika finds out that her family faces eviction due to her father's gambling, she accepts Samir's offer to drive into the mountains with two associates, Amal (Soufia Issami) and Omar (Salah Ben Salah), with hashish concealed in the car doors. In private, Amal warns her that the men will never let her leave (Amal has no idea what happened to the previous driver). But when Malika helps out her new colleague with a personal matter, she puts them both at risk. Although it might seem out of character for Malika to lay her life on the line for someone she barely knows, the filmmaker seems to be suggesting that she would prefer exile or death to a life of servitude, which is consistent with the punk worldview. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)