Berlin International Film Festival 2006

Without qualifications, the choices are stark. They can try to earn an honest living and condemn themselves to poverty. They can risk their lives by trying to get from Morocco to Europe as illegal immigrants. Alternatively, they can succumb to the temptations of crime and live prosperously in the shadow of unremitting violence.

The two leading characters are from different generations but take the same road and their characters are tangled in the same network of crime. Ney, well-played by Rabie Kati, is a young man, who cannot support his family and is reluctantly drawn into a cycle of violence. Smail,(Hakin Noury) a generation older, is serving out a 15 year jail sentence and will seek revenge.

What makes the film interesting is its approach to violence. Both leading characters demonstrate compassion and in principle, they are caring people within a caring society. Ney is trying to support his Mother, who does her utmost to keep him away from crime. Smail mentors one of Ney's friends when he ends up in jail. Yet violence is one of the few options available to the underprivileged. In 'Heaven's Door', it takes three forms. There is violence as an intrinsic element in the criminal act. Violence is also coercive, a means of preventing betrayal and maintaining the network of crime. Thirdly, violence is a gesture - vengeance and antonement. Unusually, this is a film in which the violence is credible, neither a plot device, nor an entertaining frisson.

Heaven's Door is also unusual, in that a fairly long sequence of the film, perhaps a little overlong, deals with the victims of violence, in the form of a orphaned child who ends up in the care of an American ex-patriot, one of his few surviving relatives. Prosperous, yet neurotic, she provides an interesting contrast to the Moroccan characters, who however corrupted, or corrupting, each have a clear sense of self.

Shot in Arabic, with sequences in French, this film deserves find an audience at festivals and on TV, even if it is unlikely to find much support for cinema distribution outside France, or Arabic speaking countries.