Casablanca (film) somehow wanders into Rick's Café Américain and listens to a strange tale related by Sam. The 2016 musical film "La La Land" contains multiple allusions to "Casablanca" in the imagery, dialogue, and plot. Director Robert Zemeckis of "Allied" (2016), which is also set in 1942 Casablanca, studied the film to capture the city's elegance. "Casablanca" has been subjected to many readings; Semioticians account for the film's popularity by claiming that its inclusion of stereotypes paradoxically strengthens the film. Umberto Eco wrote: Eco also singled out sacrifice as a theme, "the myth of sacrifice runs through the whole film". It was
Casablanca which is "Ad-dar Al Baidaa"', although Arabic also has its own version of Casablanca (كازابلانكا, "Kāzāblānkā"). The city is still nicknamed "Casa" by many locals and outsiders to the city. In many other cities with a different dialect, it is called "Ad-dar Al-Bida", instead. The area which is today Casablanca was founded and settled by Berbers by at least the seventh century BC. It was used as a port by the Phoenicians and later the Romans. In his book Description of Africa, Leo Africanus refers to ancient Casablanca as "Anfa", a great city founded in the Berber kingdom of Barghawata