Yasmine Benkirane's 'Queens' to premiere in Casablanca on May 17

Nisrine Erradi’s long-awaited featured film “Queens” will finally hit Moroccan cinemas on May 17, in Casablanca’s Megarama.

The film’s team is holding a special screening in Rabat, in the Renaissance cinema, this Friday before it officially hits Casablanca and the rest of the cities.

Directed by Yasmine Benkirane, the film premiered at the Venice film festival last year. It tells the story of 3 women chased by the police at the beginning of their long adventure across the Atlas valleys to the Atlantic.

The movie’s main characters are played by Nisrin Erradi, Nisrine Benchara, and Rayhan Guaran.

“I wrote Queens with the desire to put the spectator’s pleasure at the center. When I say pleasure, it is not necessarily pleasant, it can be painful,” said Benkirane in a press release shared with Hespress EN by the film’s production company.

On where men stand in her movie, the director said that rewriting women’s representation in films goes hand in hand with rewriting men’s.

In her movie, there are men with toxic masculinity, complex men, and sweet sexy men. The audience will identify with different characters as they reflect many traits that are in them.

Benkirane’s fifth female character in Queens is a mythical creature well known in Moroccan culture, “Aicha Kandisha”.

“I like the idea of reinventing her, of rewriting her story to make it the founding story of the film. Reclaiming Kandisha and making it a symbol of female revolt like the Europeans have reclaimed the figure of the witch,” explained the director, further stating that in her movie, Kandisha becomes the queen of the jinns and the myth overflows into reality to help Ines, an adult in the making, to build herself.

The director, Benkirane, grew up on the Moroccan Atlantic coast. With experience in writing for both television and film, she made Queens her first feature film.

She is also the author of two books and a host for history podcasts.

The long-awaited road movie with a “Mad Max” like aesthetic was challenging for many reasons, from only shooting for five weeks to filming in a moving truck.

Playing with vintage and pop symbols, giving female characters a complex depth, and making each character take control over their lives, Benkirane drew inspiration from Hollywood and added a Moroccan touch.

The film was screened at the prestigious International Film Festival of Marrakech, FIFM, in November 2022, as well as in many international festivals and cinematic celebrations, yet the director awaits this official Moroccan premier impatiently so that her movie meets its targetted audience.