"Jrada Malha by Idriss Rokh. A New Color and an Aesthetic Challenge"

Idriss Rokh began his creative career in theatre; he then moved to television and then to the cinema. He belongs to the new generation of Moroccan film directors, despite the fact that he is a few years older than the current generation, which generally ranges in the thirties.

As he achieved a reputable accumulation in television, as a director of drama series and sitcoms; he remained persistent and patient in his pursuit of cinematic directing, despite the difficulties he repeatedly encountered in submitting his film project to the ‘Film Projects Support Committee’.

When I mention the direction of his own first movie, ‘Lost’; it is worth saying that the cinematic experience of Idriss Rokh as a film actor and as a TV director, which he has been practicing for year, has been a good groundwork in directing his own.

His project faced repeated rejection from the ‘Moroccan Film Production Support Committee’. However, suffering from a similar denunciation while being obsessed and clinging to one’s project, makes the challenge even greater. Once it’s time to start the film technically, the director finds him/herself facing a new sort of challenge; an aesthetic obstacle, where it is indispensable to integrate form and content, audio-visual, narration, and its flow.

The director should not deny the importance of the image and its components, performance and details of diagnosis; in order for the outcome to be a film that is a whole meaning construction of a harmonious structure. It should be thought-provoking, fascinating and “tasty”: this could be the aesthetic challenge faced by filmmaker Driss Rokh.

The movie “Jrada Malha” received 4,000,000 dirhams (approximately $400,000) in revenues from the Moroccan Film Production Support Fund; it was filmed between the cities of Casablanca, Meknes, Azrou and Bensmim.
A number of young actors participated in the film; including Abdel Rahim Al Minyari, Fatima Al Zahra Bennasser, Monia Al Rumaiqi, Khansa Batma, etc.

An artistic transition from theater to cinema

The passage from one expressive world to another is an art in itself; Filmmaker Faouzi Bensaidi proved this theory by moving from theater to cinema. Driss Rokh embodies this paradox of moving between even three dramatic spheres: theatre, television and cinema; yet, what is the consequence of such a challenging crossing through his film ‘Jrada Malha?

‘Jrada Malha’ as an aesthetic challenge:

Driss El Rokh’s movie ‘Jrada Malha’ is distinguished by its boldness in aesthetic research; as it bet on high-quality, visual and musical atmospheres, drawing on the formula of films that are smooth and sturdy, in which the attractiveness of the climate in which the spectator is allocated is quite influential.

Jrada Malha participated in numerous international festivals (Toronto Festival, where it won the Best Film and Best Screenplay award), (Alexandria Festival, where it won the Best Director award); in addition to its participation in Durban in South Africa and Montreal Festival, and Buffalo Festival in the United States of America).

It is also distinguished as the directorial approach to a composition that overlaps in its psychological content with moral, imaginative, and imaginary; from the accumulation of Moroccan film in general, it is different, in the form of the dramatic tale structure, with camera positions far from television in most Moroccan film. This position is where the depth of field and climates of illumination exude meaning. The multi-structure of the film serves as a fictional narrative in which surrealism, absurdity, social drama, and illusion are remarkably mixed.

The protagonist carries this dramatic mixture in her character; where suspicion, night, love, aspiration, fear, apprehension, pleasure, and search for meaning, all together weave two hours and five minutes into an unusual aesthetic spectacle, given the general accumulation of Moroccan cinematography.

‘Jrada Malha’ is taking part in the official competition of the National Film Festival in Tangiers this year, where the competition will be fierce, between nearly all generations of Moroccan cinema.

The aesthetic challenge raised by the movie enriched the accumulation of Moroccan cinema. This could be visible in the following: The output approach is based on the quality of the image, with all its components as a result of the long directing experience in TV blastoff in a distinctive way. Spots to place the camera reflect a creative sense and the ability to penetrate the familiar, with solid knowledge and experience.

This experience which, new generations of directors, unfortunately, lack, Driss Rokh, on the other hand, has built gloriously. Younger directors try to break through the usual, with some frivolity and lack of intellectual depth; this makes them repeat themselves, due to the absence of an intellectually crippled aesthetic perspective, with an ambition towards excellence. Merging creativity with a strong foundation must be pursued aligned with the ethics of modesty, clear vision, understanding of visual culture production, cinematography and directing basically.

The quality of the scenario shows in terms of dramatic structure and accuracy in drawing the details of the events, characters, their fate, and their numerous moods. Especially when the plot is based on the ambiguity of the situation of a wife who suffers from betrayal and repeated domestic violence and abuse; as well as her psychological suffering from a shaky and even lost of memory, of stability, obsession. Questions of: What is imaginary and illusory, and what is realistic and terrifying, are raised.

Image is one of the greatest weapons used nowadays, in order to persuade, expose and manipulate. Jrada Malha is an enticing aesthetic piece of artistic work manifesting this point; looking at the work of Driss Rokh, in light of the dynamism of Moroccan cinema, which has now gone on for nearly a decade and a half at least – not counting the two years of the pandemic- where the climate of creativity was close to fitting, waiting to be completed. The structure of an economic and industrial cycle of cinema much needed in the Moroccan artistic and cultural context.