Interview: Kamal Lazraq – Les meutes (Hounds)

Seeping with film noir elements, but working with a naturalism and with a moody underworld thriller genre with a certain dose of spirituality and faith, Kamal Lazraq‘s feature debut is about the outcasts, about complex dynamics between father and son and where one bad choice begins a torrential rainfall of other missteps and miscues. One of the better screenplays out of this year’s Cannes (Les meutes aka Hounds was selected for the Un Certain Regard section and won the Jury’s Prize), and part of a new wave of Moroccan filmmaker generation truly testing the waters with original works, I got to sit down with the filmmaker at the 2023 Marrakech International Film Festival and spoke about street casting (Ayoub Elaid and Abdellatif Masstouri are incredible finds), the importance of figs, and what he is looking toward for his next feature film.