The Marrakech International Film Festival folks have revealed 25 projects chosen for the sixth edition of its industry-oriented Atlas Workshops, designed to support up-and-coming talent from Morocco, the Arab region, and Africa — and as we saw this past Cannes Film Festival we really do feel the emergence of dozens of great filmmakers coming out of these regions. Atlas Workshops will feature 16 projects in various stages of development and nine films either in production or post-production. They were chosen from a pool of 300+ applications originating from across the Arab world and the African continent. We are quick to notice the Directors’ Fortnight selected Under The Fig Trees‘ Erige Sehiri presenting a new project in Marie & Jolie and Critics’ Week selected The Gravedigger’s Wife‘s Khadar Ayderus Ahmed is moving forward with his sophomore project titled Thundering Smoke. We also have Meryam Joobeur putting the very final touches on Motherhood and Saïd Hamich Benlarbi‘s La Mer Au Loin is a project we have been tracking since last year and is in production as we speak. Here are all the presented projects — the juries will award cash prizes totaling €126,000, including the ArteKino Prize. We’ll be on hand to present some of these filmmakers to our readers.
Projects in Development
Amnesia – Dima Hamdan (Palestine) – 1st film
Hold Time For Me (Segura Para Mim O Tempo) – Fradique (Angola) – 2nd film
Il Padre Selvaggio – Sammy Baloji (Democratic Republic of the Congo) – 1st film
La Nuit Nous Protège – Moumouni Sanou (Burkina Faso) | Doc – 2nd film
Plague (Fléau) – Youssef Chebbi (Tunisia) – 2nd film
Rabies (La Rage) – Sandra Tabet (Lebanon) – 1st film
Running With Beasts – Leila Basma (Lebanon) – 1st film
The Camel Driving School – Halima Ouardiri (Morocco) – 1st film
The Passion Of Aline (La Passion d’Aline) – Rokhaya Marieme Balde (Senegal) – 1st film
Thundering Smoke (Mosi-Oa-Tunya) – Khadar Ayderus Ahmed (Somalia) – 2nd film
We Don’t Forget – Adnane Baraka (Morocco) – 2nd film
Wolfmother (Les Fils de La Louve) – Ismaël El Iraki (Morocco) – 2nd film
Atlas Close-ups (Moroccan projects in development)
Atlantic Mirage (La Fin de l’Été) – Hakim Mao– 1st film
Out Of School – Hind Bensari| Doc – 2nd film
Road Trip – Linda Qibaa Doc – 1st film
Shehrazade’s Birds (Les Oiseaux de Shehrazade) – Sofia El Khyari– 1st film
Films in Production or Post-production
Agora – Ala Eddine Slim (Tunisia) – 3rd film
La Mer Au Loin – Saïd Hamich Benlarbi (Morocco) – 2nd film
Marie & Jolie – Erige Sehiri (Tunisia) | Pre-Production – 3rd film
Motherhood – Meryam Joobeur (Tunisia) – 1st film
Perfumed With Mint – Muhammed Hamdy (Egypt) – 1st film
The Magma – Mia Bendrimia (Algeria) | Doc – 1st film
The Village Next To Paradise – Mo Harawe (Somalia) – 1st film
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).
