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

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.