road to roots

After exploring her Black identity in the US, Safae, a young Moroccan filmmaker, returns home and notices women straightening their hair at her cousin’s wedding—erasing all traces of African identity. Intrigued, she sets off across Morocco to understand this denial. Her journey reveals a paradox: youth adopt African styles as trends, disconnected from their deeper meaning. Back in Fez, sharing her findings with family unveils a buried truth—her grandfather’s mysterious origins. Each relative shares a different version of how he arrived in Fez, exposing the fragmented memory of a past linked to slavery. Determined to reconnect, Safae retraces his path in reverse, reaching Rissani, a remote village home to many Black Moroccans. This pilgrimage becomes both personal and collective, as Safae confronts the silence surrounding Black heritage in Morocco—a nation still struggling to face its erased African past.