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Al-Ahram Weekly
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Sunlit frames - Culture - Al-Ahram Weekly
As the Mediterranean sun blazes across the summer festival circuit, Arab cinema is claiming its rightful place with shining clarity. From Venice to Locarno, Toronto to Karlovy Vary, this season has seen an unprecedented lineup, with Arab voices and visions making waves on the world stage. But this isn't just about representation or numbers; it's about nuance, craft, and the multiplicity of Arab storytelling that refuses to be reduced to a single frame. The 82nd Venice Film Festival (27 August-6 September), in particular, was an unexpected mirror reflecting back the region's troubled, poetic, and urgent pulse. For the first time in the festival's history, Morocco was named the featured country at the Venice Production Bridge. Moroccan producers will pitch five projects under the VPB Focus banner, with additional works-in-progress showcased in Final Cut in Venice and immersive installations featured in the XR program, a landmark recognition that signals Morocco's evolving cinematic momentum. But beyond institutional recognition, the Moroccan cinematic voice is also making itself heard artistically—most notably through one of its most acclaimed contemporary auteurs: Maryam Touzani. Touzani's latest film, Calle Malaga, makes its world premiere in the festival's Spotlight section, an official selection dedicated to showcasing bold and genre-defying works that challenge and reinvent the relationship between film and viewer. Calle Malaga marks Touzani's Spanish-language directorial debut. Co-written with longtime collaborator Nabil Ayouch, the film stars Spanish icon Carmen Maura as Maria Angeles, a woman determined to preserve her childhood home in Morocco against her daughter's plans to sell it. Set between intimate memory and looming loss, the film extends Touzani's fascination with the personal as political, quietly radical, emotionally layered, and deeply human. Following its Venice debut, the film will continue its journey across the Atlantic with a North American premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, featured in the prestigious Special Presentations section. Born in Tangier in 1980, Maryam Touzani has become a leading voice in Moroccan cinema. Her debut Adam (2019) and follow-up, The Blue Caftan (2022) were both selected as Morocco's official submissions for the Academy Awards, garnering global acclaim for their delicate exploration of womanhood, repression, and resistance. *** Despite the absence of world premieres by Egyptian filmmakers this summer, Egypt's Film Clinic — founded by producer, screenwriter, and distributor Mohamed Hefzy — maintained a striking presence at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. Since its founding, the Cairo-based company has positioned itself as a vital force in championing emerging filmmakers across Egypt and the wider Arab world. This year, it has co-produced and/or handles the regional distribution of three Arab films making their world premieres at Venice. Leading the trio is Hijra by Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen, premiering in the official Spotlight section. The film marks Ameen's return to Venice following her acclaimed debut Scales (2019), and her second collaboration with Film Clinic. A poetic road movie, Hijra follows a grandmother and her two granddaughters on a journey across the Saudi desert — a meditation on loss, belonging, and generational connection. Shot at nine diverse locations, from AlUla and Tabuk to Jeddah and NEOM, the film brings together a wide network of Arab collaborators, with Film Clinic also handling MENA distribution through its indie arm. Also backed by Film Clinic, Cotton Queen — the debut feature by Sudanese director Suzannah Mirghani — is featured in the Critics' Week. Set in a Sudanese cotton-farming village, the film centres on a teenage girl who becomes the focal point of a tense power struggle when a young businessman proposes marriage. The film is co-produced with Mad Solutions, a leading Egypt-based distribution entity founded by Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab, specialised in supporting emerging cinema in the region, and marks Mirghani's transition from award-winning shorts to long-form storytelling. The company's third Venice title is Roqia, a chilling Algerian horror by Yanis Koussim, also screening in the Critics' Week. The story unfolds between past and present as a disciple fears that his aging mentor, a traditional healer battling Alzheimer's, may unleash a buried evil. Film Clinic Indie Distribution is handling MENA rights. Also worth noting is that the Egyptian-British award-winning actor Amir El-Masry participates in the closing film of the Venice Film Festival this year, Nights of Hero 100, directed by Julia Jackman. The film stars Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, and Richard E. Grant. *** Palestine owns the heart of the international festival circuit this summer. At Venice, the main competition is led by one of the season's most urgent and emotionally shattering films: The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by Tunisian auteur Kaouther Ben Hania. The hybrid feature reconstructs the final, globally broadcast phone call of six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in January 2024. Ben Hania, fresh from her Oscar-nominated Four Daughters, delivers a cinematic act of mourning that is also a moral reckoning. In the Orizzonti Shorts section, Coyotes by Said Zagha marks a historic first as the inaugural Palestinian short selected in this competitive lineup. The film, anchored by Maria Zreik and Ali Suliman, explores grief and resilience through a lean, powerful narrative. Meanwhile, at the Locarno Film Festival (6-16 August), Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari returns with With Hasan in Gaza, a meditative road movie built from rediscovered MiniDV footage. Written, directed, shot, edited, and produced by Aljafari himself, the film follows a journey across Gaza in 2001 with a local guide, Hasan, whose fate remains unknown. 'It is a film about the catastrophe,' Aljafari states, 'and the poetry that resists.' Also in Locarno's Concorso Internazionale, Still Playing by Mohamed Mesbah depicts a father and video game creator navigating Israeli army raids in the West Bank while crafting digital worlds where parents can no longer protect their children. The film blurs the line between resistance and resignation. Baisanos, a collaborative work by Chilean-Palestinian siblings Andrés and Francisca Khamis Giacoman, offers a different lens on identity and memory. Through the loyal fans of the Deportivo Palestino football club in Chile, the film opens a dialogue between diaspora and homeland, dream and return. In Toronto (TIFF, 4-14 September), Annemarie Jacir's long-awaited Palestine 36 will have its world premiere. Set during the 1936 uprising against British colonial rule, the film reimagines a key moment in Palestinian history with an international cast that includes Jeremy Irons, Hiam Abbass, Liam Cunningham, Yasmine Al Massri, and Saleh Bakri. Shot by legendary French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, it is poised to be a landmark in Jacir's already formidable career. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (4-12 July) also amplifies Palestinian voices. All That's Left of You by Cherien Dabis screened in the Special Screenings section. Set in the West Bank in 1988, the film freezes at a pivotal protest scene before the mother of the protagonist breaks the fourth wall and takes the audience through 70 years of dispossession, from the Nakba to the present. The cast includes Palestinian icons Saleh and Mohammad Bakri alongside Dabis herself. In the same festival, anthropologist and filmmaker Diana Allan presented Partition in the Imagina section. A conceptual work shot on 16mm film, it combines colonial newsreels and recruitment propaganda with the voices and songs of recently displaced Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The result is an unsettling, layered meditation on the aftershocks of partition past and present. *** In addition to Cotton Queen by Sudanese director Suzannah Mirghani, which headlines the Venice Critics' Week, two other Arab female filmmakers make striking feature debuts on the international stage this season. At Venice, in the Out of Competition Non-Fiction section, Libyan director Jihan Kikhia presents My Father and Qaddafi, a deeply personal excavation of trauma, politics, and memory. In 1993, her father Mansur Rashid Kikhia — a former Libyan diplomat and peaceful opponent of Qaddafi — disappeared in Cairo. The film traces her mother's nineteen-year search for truth and Jihan's own reckoning with the silences surrounding his fate. Intimate yet political, the documentary reveals how entire lives and legacies can vanish under the weight of dictatorship, and how the survivors carry the absence forward. Meanwhile, at the Toronto International Film Festival (4-14 September), Jordanian filmmaker Zain Duraie will premiere Sink in the Discovery section. A searing, empathetic drama, Sink centres on a mother's struggle to navigate her son's deteriorating mental health, brought to life with emotional nuance and heightened by the lush cinematography of Farouk Laâridh (Four Daughters). TIFF describes the debut as 'a magnificent portrait' and a breakthrough for a vital new voice in Arab cinema. *** This summer's festivals offered striking variations on the wars that have fractured the Levant and Iraq for decades. At Locarno, two powerful films by acclaimed Iraqi directors confront the aftermaths of conflict through deeply personal lenses. Tales of the Wounded Land, screening in the Concorso Internazionale section, marks Abbas Fahdel's latest act of witnessing. 'My film was born from the need to bear witness to a war that shattered our lives and homes,' he states, 'and to show how, despite everything, resilience and humanity continue to flourish amid the ruins.' Set in southern Lebanon, the film is an intimate chronicle of a war that lingered for 18 months, capturing the lives of those trapped in its shadow. Through the voices of family, friends, and neighbours, Fahdel documents the silent labour of survival—of rebuilding, mourning, and preserving dignity amid loss. In Piazza Grande, Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji's Irkalla: Gilgamesh's Dream reimagines the mythic in post-war Baghdad. 'Irkalla is my return to a wound that never healed — a myth reborn through the soul of a child,' Al-Daradji explains. 'Not just a film, but a whispered resistance against silence.' The story follows nine-year-old Chum-Chum, a diabetic dreamer who believes the Tigris hides a gate to the underworld where he can reunite with his lost parents. Similarly, the Proxima Competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival features TrepaNation, a raw and explosive autobiographical film by Syrian filmmaker and visual artist Ammar al-Beik. Set in a refugee camp near Berlin in 2014, the film documents his seven-month stay in a cubicle where, to survive he films, rebels, and archives. Czech film historian Karel Och describes it as 'the result of ten years of editing; the intensive autobiography intersects the history of Europe and the Middle East, and film history, too.' *** North African cinema, in which questions of homeland and exile often intertwine, continues to assert its bold presence across the summer festival circuit. At Locarno's Concorso Internazionale, controversial Franco-Tunisian director, screenwriter, and actor Abdellatif Kechiche returns with the latest installment of his sprawling saga, Mektoub: My Love. Known for his naturalistic style and emotionally charged portraits of youth and desire, Kechiche is a polarising yet pivotal figure in contemporary cinema. His new film follows Amin, who returns to Sète after studying in Paris, still clinging to his dream of becoming a filmmaker. A chance encounter with an American producer and his wife Jess, who is chosen as the potential lead of Amin's script The Essential Elements of Universal Existence, opens a new chapter, yet fate, unpredictable as ever, has its own script to follow. In Piazza Grande, Hafsia Herzi, who launched her acting career in Kechiche's La Graine et le Mulet — a role that earned her a César and Venice's Best New Actress award — makes her mark as a director with La Petite Dernière (Little Sister). Based on the acclaimed novel by Fatima Daas, the film follows the inner world of a young Muslim woman in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Parisian suburb, as she navigates her sexual identity, faith, and fractured relationships. 'Reading the book was an instant crush,' Herzi notes. 'As a woman, I was deeply moved. I immediately thought: I've never seen a character like this on screen. This story is truly universal.' Elsewhere in Fuori Concorso, Tunisian director Mehdi Hmili gives us Exile, a surreal and politically charged drama. The story centres on Mohamed, a steelworker haunted by the death of a friend in a workplace accident, now living with a piece of rusted metal lodged in his skull. As the rust invades his body, he becomes a reluctant martyr — rising against corruption and transforming into a symbol of sacrifice and resistance. Hmili, who debuted with the 2016 Thala My Love — a love story set during the Tunisian revolution — continues to fuse the personal with the political in hauntingly poetic ways. * A version of this article appears in print in the 7 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Ya Biladi
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Ya Biladi
Moroccan film «Everybody Loves Touda» shines at Cannes with double award win
The latest feature film by Nabil Ayouch, Everybody Loves Touda, has won two awards at the Critics' Awards for Arab Films, held alongside the Cannes Festival from May 13 to 24, 2025. The film received the Best Screenplay Award (Nabil Ayouch and Maryam Touzani) and the Best Actress Award (Nisrin Erradi), following its official selection last year and its designation as Morocco's entry for the Oscars in the Best Foreign Film category. «Morocco triumphs once again, just as it did two years ago when The Blue Caftan by Maryam Touzani also won significant awards», a statement noted, highlighting that Nabil Ayouch's film has earned recognition elsewhere. Notably, it received the Grand Prize and Best Actress Award in Valenciennes (France), the Best Actress Award at FESPACO (Burkina Faso), and further accolades in Malmö (Sweden). Screened at international festivals including Mill Valley and Palm Springs (United States), El Gouna (Egypt), Angoulême (France), and the FIFM in Marrakech (Morocco), Everybody Loves Touda is now rolling out internationally. After its Moroccan theatrical release in December 2024, it is currently showing in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, with initial releases underway in Sweden and Romania. In Germany, it will hit theaters starting May 29, alongside ongoing runs in Italy, Norway, and Denmark. In this film, Touda dreams of becoming a chikha. Every evening in the bars of her small provincial town, she sings ancient texts of resistance, love, and emancipation, hoping for a better future for herself and her son. She eventually decides to leave everything behind to live and shine in Casablanca. Balancing romance and poignant moments, Everybody Loves Touda offers a poetic mosaic exploring universal themes of love, family, and the quest for self. Besides Nisrin Erradi in the lead role, the cast includes Joud Chamihy and Jalila Talemsi, with guest appearances by Amine Ennaji, Abdellatif Chaouqi, Abderrahim Elmaniari, Mounia Lamkimel, and Abdelilah Rachid. Produced in Morocco by Ali'n Productions, in co-production with Les Films du Nouveau Monde (France), Velvet Films (Belgium), SnowGlobe (Denmark), Viking Film (Netherlands), and Staer (Norway), Everybody Loves Touda is sold internationally by MK2 International.
