Interview: Halima Ouardiri – The Camel Driving School (Work in Progress)

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Cutting her teeth on the short form for just over a decade with award-winning trio of films which have premiered at Rotterdam, the Berlinale and mostly recently the 2023 edition of TIFF with Les Patins, Swiss-Moroccan filmmaker Halima Ouardiri moves towards her feature length cinema with The Camel Driving School – a much buzzed about project that landed the 2nd prize for projects in development at the 2023 Marrakech International Film Festival’s Atlas Workshop.

Earmarked for a production start date later this year, this tells the story of a Moroccan housewife who takes up a job in a pastry shop to support herself and her son following her husband’s death. There, she meets a group of independent women who are involved in the Camel Driving School, a club which prepares for amateur rallies in the desert and begins living a double life. Written by Ouardiri and Emma Benestan (who just completed shooting on Animale), I had the chance to sit down with Halima Ouardiri to discuss what we can expect to find with her feature debut.

Eric Lavallée
Eric Lavalléehttps://www.ericlavallee.com
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist, and critic at IONCINEMA.com, established in 2000. A regular at Sundance, Cannes, and Venice, Eric holds a BFA in film studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013, he served on the narrative competition jury at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson’s "This Teacher" (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022, he was a New Flesh Juror for Best First Feature at the Fantasia International Film Festival. His top films for 2023 include The Zone of Interest (Glazer), Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An), Totem (Lila Avilés), La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher), All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson). He is a Golden Globes Voter.

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