Rabat- In line with ongoing efforts to control COVID-19 cases in Morocco, this year’s Marrakech International Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops will be held online for the second year.
The annual meeting will be held from November 22 to 25 online, and it will feature 15 development projects and nine production or post-production projects by Arab and African filmmakers, selected from 250 submissions.
The Moroccan Cinema Centre and Netflix are once again partners for this year’s event.
Moroccan filmmaker Laila Marrakchi is currently working on La Mas Dulce, a story that revolves around four Moroccan women working as strawberry pickers in Spain who decide to speak out against their deplorable working and living conditions.
The film will be Marrakchi’s third work to premiere at a festival, after Cannes award-winning Marock and Rock The Casbah, which world premiered in Toronto in 2013. After working on such series as Marseille, The Bureau, and The Eddy for eight years, the Moroccan filmmaker is now returning to directing feature films.
Lesothan self-taught filmmaker and visual artist, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, who is well known for his film “This Is Not a Burial, It’s A Resurrection,” is scheduled to present his new feature film, “The Chattering Of Teeth.”
Set in Lesotho in 1852, the film tells the story of a father and son who seek refuge in a fortress city on top of a mountain, inhabited by people trying to rebuild their lives but still haunted by their experience of warfare and siege.
Other projects in development include “The Last Days Of R.M.” by Algerian filmmaker Amin Sidi-Boumediene, whose debut picture “Abou Leila” world premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
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At the height of Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s, a writer from Algeria goes into self-exile in Paris after receiving death threats back home. After being separated from his wife and son, he falls into a state of near madness as he starts seeing ghosts of characters from his novels.
The second feature film by Rwandan director Mutiganda wa Nkunda, “A Girl From Madrid,” explores Rwandan attitudes towards girls who get pregnant out of wedlock as seen through the viewpoint of a girl who returns home after spending time in a city metaphorically named Madrid.
In the 2021 edition of the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco), Nkunda’s debut feature “Nameless,” is about a young Kigali couple struggling to make ends meet, took home the best screenplay award.
In the project, French-Tunisian producer Nadim Cheikhrouha, whose previous credits include “The Man Who Sold His Skin,” leads the production through his Paris-based Tanit Films company.
There is also a special focus on Moroccan feature projects in the selection. They include Hakim Belabbes’ semi-autobiographical film, which looks back at an artist’s lifelong love of film.
A total of 15 consultants, specializing in screenwriting, production, distribution, editing, and music, will offer tailored advice to the 24 projects. An international audience of 350 professionals will be invited to attend an online showcase of the projects.
The program will also include a series of online talks, including a conversation with Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch, the director of “Casablanca Beats,” the film that Morocco will submit to the Oscars in 2022, and with Tunisian-Egyptian actress Hend Sabry about her experiences working with Netflix on an original series.
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