麻豆社

The years since the Millennium have been a tumultuous time for Morocco.

With the arrival of a new, more progressive king and reaction against terrorist bombings in 2003 helping to galvanise a burgeoning arts community - and nowhere has this been more the case than in the country's largest city of Casablanca.

Film-makers and musicians there have been at the vanguard of those questioning repressive political and social structures, in part because it is the city where earlier experiments with a more capitalistic economic model have led to a particularly apparent division between rich and poor.

Professor Andrew Hussey, who's been visiting the city for many years, hears from many of the key players in what's been labelled the Nayda movement - including the director of the ground breaking movie 'Casa Negra' and the rapper whose recent imprisonment for criticising the police suggests that the movement still has some distance to go before Moroccan artists can fully exploit the freedoms enjoyed by those in Europe and the USA who have offered them such inspiration.

Producer: Geoff Bird

First broadcast on 麻豆社 Radio 4 in September 2014.