In April 1953, film "Salut Casa!—"a "pseudo-documentary" propaganda piece intended for French audiences—played at the Cannes Film Festival. The film shows the colonial machine carrying out its "mission civilizatric"e at full steam. The French government described Casablanca as a "laboratory of urbanism," and the French urbanist Michel Écochard—director of the "Service de l’Urbanisme," Casablanca's urban planning office at the time—featured prominently in the film, discussing how challenges such as internal migration and rapid urbanization were being handled in Casablanca.