French Montana on His New Film ‘For Khadija’: ‘The First Doc is Like Your First Album’
Todd Gilchrist editor “For Khadija” is billed as a documentary about French Montana, but there’s a reason that it’s named not after the hip-hop alter ego of Moroccan expatriate Karim Kharbouch, but his mother. “I felt like my mother’s story, the beginning to the end, the closure of her going back to Morocco, is when I was like, okay, now the story has a meaning,” French tells Variety. “This goes out to all the mothers that struggle, that have kids, that was forced to sacrifice.” Given the other films made about rappers and their families — including “Dear Mama,” about Afeni and Tupac Shakur and “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell,” which heavily features Notorious B.I.G.’s mother Violetta Wallace — it’s not necessarily an unexpected place to start. But the documentary, which premieres June 16 at the Tribeca film Festival, uses the relationship between Karim and Khadija to highlight the unpredictable path that led a scrappy Moroccan child to become a worldwide rap star, while charting the financial struggles and familial strife that threatened to derail his meteoric rise.