Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2022: #52. Sofia Alaoui’s Parmi Nous (Among Us)

Published on January 10, 2022

Parmi Nous (Among Us)

It’s almost unfair how talented our next featured artist is. This year’s highest ranked directorial debut on our list belongs to Sofia Alaoui — a French-Moroccan filmmaker who blew our minds and the lid of Sundance when her Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival (2020). Hometown fans in France also took notice giving her the César (aka French Oscar) for best short fiction film in 2021. Naturally Alaoui went back to the fruitful backdrop of Morocco this past October to film her feature debut Parmi Nous – a project that landed some pre-production thunder with coin via the International Arte Kino International Prize at the Atlas Workshops in 2020. Oumaïma Barid, Mehdi Dehbi, Fouad Oughaou and Souad Khouyi star in what is coined as “a mystical journey through modern-day Morocco, part social drama and part science-fiction“. This is produced by Wrong Films’ Thomas Carillon and Margaux Laurier.

Gist: The story revolves around 22-year-old Itto, a newlywed who’s living with her husband at her in-laws’ home while pregnant. As her pregnancy nears its end, a supernatural event turns their daily lives upside down.

Release Date/Prediction: We’re betting that all three sections in Cannes (Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week) will be competing for the title — and if this next level status then maybe Thierry Frémaux might lasso this as a very rare debut film competing for the Palme d’Or.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member 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 served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).