Jerada is a mining city in Morocco. The coal town operations officially stopped in 2001. Since then, recession has taken hold, and rebellion rumbles within the local population. L’mina is seeking to recreate a sort of archive of Jerada by revealing the stories of the inhabitants and the memory of its industrial architecture.Read More »
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What is it that is so controversial about Islam that more than a few people get antsy whenever said religion is brought up as a topic of conversation? It is actually more violent than other religions? Is there something else about, something specific, that rubs outsiders the wrong way? It seems strange considering that an immense portion of Earth’s inhabitants adhere to its teachings, about one quarter to be precise. How can so many people be wrong, or be practicing the ‘wrong religion?’ Be that as it may, the fact remains that, in this early 21st century, the world’s population is keeping a keen eye on Islam in all its depictions, and not always for the most enviable of reasons. Read More »
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Directed by Farida Belyazid. Cast: Zaki-yah Tahiri, Eva Saint Paul, Shuaybiyah Adhrawi, Bashir Sukayrij, Ahmad al-Buanani. Nadia, a young Moroccan emigre, returns from Paris to Fez to visit her dying father. At his funeral, she is moved by the voice of Karina chanting the Koran. A powerful friendship develops between the two women as Nadia decides to turn her father’s place into a Muslim women’s shelter. A Sufi tale told in a metaphoric lanaguage, A door to the sky was one of the first films from North Africa that addressed the social and economic changes as proposed by a spiritual Muslim woman on a quest to preserve her cultural and religious identity.Read More »
In a village in the High Atlas Mountains, at the crossroad between tradition and change, two sisters experience the last seasons of childhood.Read More »
Irrepressible Touda only dreams of one thing: being a Sheikha, a respected traditional Moroccan performer empowered by the lyrics of the fierce female poets who came before her – with their songs of resistance and emancipation.
Performing every evening in provincial bars under the lustful gaze of men, Touda plans to set her sights on leaving her small village for the bright lights of Casablanca where she hopes to be recognized as a true artist and also secure a better future for her and her son.Read More »
A young woman attending a conference in Tangier with her husband is kidnapped and raped, but rebuilds her relationship with her husband on a trip to the south of Morocco.Read More »
Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter, Warda. When Samia, a young pregnant woman, knocks on their door, Abla is far from imagining that her life will change forever.Read More »
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A Moroccan woman’s search for truth tangles with a web of lies in her family history. As a daughter and filmmaker, she fuses personal and national history as she reflects on the 1981 Bread Riots, drawing out connections to modern Morocco.Read More »
– 2018 THESSALONIKI — FIPRESCI Prize
– 2018 CARTHAGE — Special Mention, Best First Work
– 2018 BRATISLAVA — Best Director
– 2018 CANNES — Un Certain Regard-Best Screenplay
Sofia, who is in denial of her pregnancy, gets labor pains during a family meal with guests. Thanks to her med student cousin Lena’s vigilance, they go to a hospital without alerting anyone and she delivers her baby. However, her family aside, bureaucracy and laws get involved as well: if she won’t reveal the identity of the father, the hospital will need to inform the authorities. In her feature-length debut, Meryem Benm’barek delivers a thorough and striking analysis of class differences, gender inequality, matriarchal traditions, and taboos that form the fabric of Moroccan society starting off from article 490 of the country’s penal code which sanctions prison sentences for sexual relations out of wedlock.Read More »