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Born in 1959 in Settat to a teacher from Marrakech and a mother from Fes, Mohamed Lotfi grew up in an intellectual environment. «I am a descendant of the Laraki family, originally from Fes, but my pen name is a different one because when you bear such a name in Morocco you become associated with the family's heritage and you lose your personal identity», he told Yabiladi.
His father, a former resistant and an Arabic-language teacher, was behind his love for books, poetry and reading. The small family lived in Casablanca, Mohammedia and Salé before settling down in Rabat, where Mohamed took theater, dancing and writing classes.
Art and writing
In the Hassan district in Rabat, Mohamed Lotfi was a bookworm, spending his third time in a library and cultural centers. In Rabat, his love and appreciation for Moroccan mothers and women grew bigger. «Moroccans are very fond of cooking, but I am particularly interested in my mom's cooking, and I try to render homage to all Moroccans through that», said the Moroccan national.
Mohamed was also a photographer, he «was raised by a hero father». Twelve years later, his father was assigned to head Rabat's National Library, which built the personality of Mohamed and boosted his thirst for knowledge.
The young man was highly drawn to books written by Egyptian novelists, including Taha Hussain and Naguib Mahfouz. In addition to his studies, Mohamed Lotfi preserved his reading habit and became a ballet dance, painter, filmmaker and comedian.
A jack of all trades
When he turned 16, Mohamed Lotfi presented a dancing show on national TV. He also played a role in a film called Amina, directed by Mohamed Bayya Tazi.
At high school, Mohamed benefited from all the readings he did growing up. But to further improve his writing skills, he joined journalism, working for daily newspaper L'Opinion with his friend Khalil Raiss.
The young man also joined the Foyer de recherche artistique theatrale, known as FRAT, where he was supervised by Hamid Kirane. He was a person that introduced me to western culture and I was lucky to meet him, said Lotfi. His love for theater got bigger due to plays written and directed by Said El Ouardi that he considers as a big brother.
After that, Mohamed Lotfi studied philosophy at Mohammed V University in Rabat. On his freshmen year, he went on a tour to Europe to attend dancing and acting workshops.
After staying for seven months in Germany, he realized that he wants to build a career in arts and that he is dropping out of college. Once in Canada, he joined Laval, where he studied film and visual arts.
A new life in Montreal
In 1985, Mohamed Lotfi developed a new passion for radio. He joined a local radio station, where he hosted several shows for six hours, including «Musicalement arabe» and «A toi arabe».
He then hosted special political broadcasts on women in the Arab world. His artistic background allowed him to attract a big audience.
Since 1989, Mohamed Lotfi is known in Quebec through the program «Souverains anonymes» that he presented in prison, produced and animated the program with a group of prisoners from the prison of Bordeaux (Montreal).
It is a show that helped detainees integrate socially, said Lotfi who explained that his show was broadxast in 2008 through the women section of the Oukacha prison in Casablanca.
In Canada, the program gained fame that it was broadcast by several Quebec radio stations, as well as on the site of Souverains anonymes. It was a space for prisoners to show their artistic side, as Mohamed Lotfi explains. Today, more than 20,000 prisoners participated to the show.
Mohamed Lotfi entrusts us with the forthcoming release of a book on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the show, as well as the centralization and publication on the Internet of all the archives. He now claims his status as an «educator more than a journalist».
