On the occasion of its 21st edition, which will take place from November 29th to December 7th, 2024, the Marrakech International Film Festival will present 70 films selected from 32 countries in its various sections.
These include the Official Competition, Gala Screenings, Special Screenings, the 11th Continent, the Moroccan Panorama, Cinema for Young Audiences & Families, and films shown as part of the Tributes program, the organizers said in a press release.
Twelve of these films were supported by the Atlas Workshops, the industry platform dedicated to the development of talents launched by the Festival in 2018, while nine of the films were selected to represent their countries at the Academy Awards, the same source added.
The Official Competition seeks to reveal new talents in world cinema through 14 first and second films. The filmmakers vying for the Étoile d’Or explore a wide range of cinematic genres, from melodrama and documentary to futuristic storytelling and romantic comedy.
Moroccan filmmakers Saïd Hamich Benlarbi and Hind Meddeb respectively present Across the Sea, a luminous love film about exile, and Sudan, Remember Us, a poetic ode to the resistance of Sudanese youth.
Other films in the competition take a humanist look at current events, including the situation in Ukraine in Under the Volcano, Damian Kocur’s powerful second feature, and in Somalia in The Village Next to Paradise, Mo Harawe’s tale of love and resilience.
With The Wolves Always Come at Night, Gabrielle Brady probes the consequences of climate change in Mongolia in a documentary with splendid images.
Films from Asia include Huo Xin’s Bound in Heaven, which delivers a portrait of strong women to tackle the issue of domestic violence in China, and The Maw Naing’s Ma—Cry of Silence , a depiction of the courageous struggle of Burmese women workers
In their debut feature films, Muhammed Hamdy and Dania Reymond-Boughenou plunge viewers into the history of their respective countries: Egypt in the hypnotic Perfumed with Mint and Algeria in the fantastical Silent Storms, which makes its international premiere in Marrakech.
The new revelation of Turkish cinema, Murat Fıratoğlu, presents One of Those Days When Hemme Dies, a graphic work about a man determined to triumph over injustice.
Two films in the Competition take advantage of unspoken elements of the family unit to expose societal realities: a Palestinian family living in Haifa in Scandar Copti’s Happy Holidays and Argentinian families in Silvina Schnicer’s The Cottage, which comes to Marrakech as an international premiere.
Finally, two charming comic dramas portray youths searching for their voices: Neo Sora traces the political awakening of Japanese high school students in the futuristic Happyend, while Laura Piani’s Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a funny, heartfelt film about the romantic hopes of a bookseller.
The 21st Festival’s opening night film is The Order, a crime thriller directed by Justin Kurzel, who returns to the Marrakech International Film Festival after winning the Jury Prize for his first film and who was a member of the jury of the 19th edition of the Festival in 2022.
The six Gala Screenings present some of the most eagerly awaited international films of the year.
Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here is a deeply moving family drama that recounts the courageous struggle of a woman confronted with the disappearance of her husband during the military dictatorship. In Marrakech for its Moroccan premiere, Nabil Ayouch’s Everybody Loves Touda is a portrait of a free woman featuring an incandescent performance by Nisrine Erradi.
David Cronenberg, the great master of science fiction to whom the Festival pays tribute this year, brings his most personal film, The Shrouds, to Marrakech. Carine Tardieu presents The Ties That Bind Us, a benevolent film about motherhood centered on a sensitive performance by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.
Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a family film that veers towards the thriller genre, represents a powerful plea for freedom in Iran.
The Gala Screenings program closes with David Oelhoffen’s Fourth Wall, which takes place in war-torn Lebanon in 1982 and questions the role of art in times of conflict.
This year’s Special Screenings include 15 current works, among them the latest films by directors who have been celebrated at the world’s premier film festivals: Andrea Arnold, Edward Berger, Mahdi Fleifel, Payal Kapadia, Rungano Nyoni, and Yeo Siew Hua.
Two of the most promising actors of their generation attend with their most recent work: Nahuel Perez Biscayart presents Luis Ortega’s slapstick comedy Kill the Jockey, and Adam Bessa will be in Marrakech with Tunisian director Meryem Joobeur’s fantastical drama Who Do I Belong To. Jean-Claude Barny unveils the world premiere of Fanon, the long-awaited biopic of Frantz Fanon, one of the greatest thinkers on the issue of colonialism.
International premieres include Baya Kasmi’s tender comedy Mikado and The Vanishing, Karim Moussaoui’s fascinating story about the passing down of values from one generation to the next.
The recently restored version of The Camp at Thiaroye will be screened to mark the 80th anniversary of the tragic massacre it depicts. Three captivating documentaries complete the selection: Petra Costa’s Apocalypse in the Tropics, Ayman El Amir’s The Brink of Dreams, and Myriam El Hajj’s Diaries from Lebanon.
The 11th Continent program comprises 13 innovative fiction and documentary films that explore cinema that has no borders and that shake up representations of territory.
They include the latest works by critically acclaimed filmmakers (Miguel Gomes, Péter Kerekes, Roberto Minervini, and Matthew Rankin) as well as films by a new generation of daring auteurs (Kamal Aljafari, Ali Asgari, Sylvie Ballyot, Inadelso Cossa, Nelson Makengo, Alexandra Simpson, Abdellah Taïa, and Maria Trenor).
The program also features the first screening of a restored version of Nationality: Immigrant, Sidney Sokhona’s manifesto film.
The Panorama of Moroccan Cinema presents five fiction and documentary films by Moroccan directors, of which three are world or international premieres: Simone Bitton’s The Thousand and One Days of Hajj Edmond, Abdeslam Kelai’s Nocturnal Sonata, and Jawad Rhalib’s Since I Was Born. Moroccan cinema is especially prominent this year, with a total of 12 films presented in the Festival’s various sections.
Cinema for Young Audiences and Families features 7 films dedicated to family audiences and young viewers, aged from 4 to 18.
Finally, the 70-film program is rounded out by a selection of films by Naïma Elmcherqui and David Cronenberg, and starring Sean Penn, the three personalities the Festival salutes in this year’s Tributes, which screen at the Palais des Congrès and the Musée Yves Saint-Laurent.
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