As we spoke on the terrace of Unifrance during the Cannes Film Festival, a little tiny bird with a loud, rhythmical chirp decided it needed to chime in. Perhaps, I thought as I listened to the recording later, it was the spirit, the animal incarnation of a Sheikha, the beautiful, strong, freedom-loving tradition of women singers that the French-Moroccan filmmaker pays homage to in his latest masterpiece.

Let’s get this out of the way as soon as possible. I loved Everybody Loves Touda, Nabil Ayouch’s portrait of a strong woman, the newest title from a filmmaker whose entire career, and existence, seems to have been about exalting courageous women. Both as a screenwriter, collaborating on his wife’s work like the 2019 Adam and the 2022 title The Blue Caftan, but also as a director, of films such as the 2007 Whatever Lola Wants, to 2017’s Razzia, and the 2021 Cannes Competition title Casablanca Beats (‘Haut et Fort’). Even if a film of Ayouch appears at first a man’s story, the underlying current is female. Strong, fierce and powerfully female.

What seemed incredible to me is that Ayouch and I have never met, until this magical Festival de Cannes, which proved a feast of great cinema and chance encounters. Thanks to the film’s wonderful US and European publicists, I sat down with the French-Moroccan maestro and the conversation flowed — despite my poor French. But his generous English and brilliant translator made sure I didn’t miss a beat, nor a quote.

Ayouch comes from an impressive background, one that is as unique as his cinema. “I was raised and born in a suburb of Paris but since 25 years I live in Casablanca,” he tells me. Cinema possesses a certain responsibility, he agrees with me, because, he explains, “I’ve learned how to watch the world, to understand the world and to love me through art, culture and movies. I’ve learned that differences are not a pain, multiple identities are not a pain, it can be a richness.” He continues, “when I was a kid it was not easy to understand that because when you live in France with a Moroccan name, you go to Morocco and you don’t speak like a Moroccan — Jewish mother, Muslim father and this makes you always feel as a total foreigner, wherever you are.” But one day, comes an awakening, as he tells it “and then comes art, and cinema, and then you understand that, no, on the contrary, I’m the opposite — it’s rich to be like that! And that’s what I want to do, and how I want to express myself. And how I’m going to play my part, in changes that I hope are coming, already came and will come.”

A filmmaker who believes in cinema as a means to change the world has me at “hello.”

The story of Everybody Loves Touda, which world premiered in the Cannes Premiere curated line up, a couture selection of eight masterpieces which were presented — one per night — during the central days of the festival inside the Salle Debussy, is one of a woman with courage seeking artistic freedom and a better life for herself and her son. Touda encounters nothing but obstacles in her way, because the world she inhabits cannot comprehend her passion and artistic emancipation. What is substituted instead, coming from her mostly male audience is lust, and from other women, jealousy.

Her reaction, often an overly violent one, as Ayouch explains to me “is because they see her like they want to see her and she doesn’t want to be seen like that. She wants to be seen as an artist, she is an artist.” He explains the tradition she aspires to further, “those women, the Sheikhats are pure and truly artists. They are heroines of ancient times, when they had to fight against very powerful people, very powerful lords at that time. Some of them were killed for that and Touda, she is the heiress of that tradition, of those women.”

As we speak, a small bird perched high in the tree above us begins to chirp and the sound is recorded on my device. At measured intervals, it interrupts the interview with its high pitched tweet. I’d like to think that it’s the spirit of a Sheikha, underscoring the importance of what Ayouch has done for women, strong unapologetic women everywhere who fight every day for their place in the world. 

I confess to Ayouch that the film is very powerful for a woman to watch. Because of how it starts, within the first five minutes there is a traumatic event in Touda’s life. And that’s when I realized, as an audience member that within herself, she’s never dealt with that trauma. As a woman, I felt like she is a bomb waiting to explode because of what has happened to her. 

The film is also left somewhat open ended, and I tell Ayouch I think I know where Touda is going… Ayouch agrees. “Because she has a dignity,” he says, solemnly, then continuing “and that is the most powerful thing that a woman can have in those situations — dignity.”

I ask Ayouch if he’s ever questioned himself, over telling women’s stories through his work. “I have not been waiting for MeToo to put strong women at the center of my stories and my films.” The bird above us gets even louder and the chirping is much more hurried, urgent sounding almost. Ayouch continues, “I’ve always been inspired by strong women…” To which I hear myself intervene with “you are married to one!” She is of course Maryam Touzani, the Moroccan filmmaker and actress, who also co-wrote the script of Everybody Loves Touda with Ayouch.

“I’m married to one, you’re absolutely right,” Ayouch chimes back, “and it’s probably linked to the fact that I’ve been raised by a single mother, she was an example for me, but it’s also because I’m convinced that those women play a key part in the society of the Region of the world where I live.” Moroccan women, women in the Maghreb in general, are often the breadwinners and heads of the household, but it’s not always due to emancipation, rather absent men who leave. “I wanted them,” these women, Ayouch continues “to be in the center of my films very soon, and I wanted to give them a voice and a face — especially because their fights are even stronger oftentimes: fights for education, fights for having the equal part in the inheritance that male have, fight for being able to go to school in the countryside and so on. And those fights have be made and cinema can help. I’m convinced by that, since a long time, way before MeToo.”

How did Ayouch cast his lead actress, I inqure next. “I met Nisrin [Erradi] 15 years ago actually, I was producing a TV show where she was one of the actresses. She was still in acting school at the time. She blew me away at that time.” Serendipitously, Ayouch then met up with her again.

“I then saw her again when she was starring in the film Adam, directed by my wife and at that time I’d already made several films that had Sheikhats as secondary characters, where the music was present — Horses of God for example and Razzia. But I always had in mind the idea that one day I’d make a film in which the Sheikha would be the central character.” So Erradi must have been an exceptional dancer and singer already? I wonder out loud.

Ayouch, with his intense stare, shakes his head no. “She’s not a singer, she’s an actress but she’s a wonderful actress who trained herself a year and a half to learn how to sing, to dance, to move, to speak, the rhythm like a real sheikha, that’s why she is so credible.” I am left speechless for a moment, before regaining my composure. Erradi is every inch the singer and the dancer and embodies both the popular Moroccan music she performs as well as the Aita, a form of vocal poetry born several centuries ago in the plains of Morocco, perfectly.

As Ayouch explains in his press kit interview “there is an epic dimension to these sung tales that travelled the country from one valley to the other until they formed a Aita.”

“Music is very important to you, as a man and a filmmaker,” I next tell Ayouch.

“There are things that you can say with the words of a song that you cannot say in everyday life,” he explains, “and those poetry songs, the “aita” that we hear in the film, especially, they are political songs, very engaged socially.” He goes on to say that “those women were part of all the fights of Morocco, they were the first ones to sing about love, bodies, desire, something that could be considered very subversive still today, but they do it through their songs. That’s why sometimes singing is important.”

In Everybody Loves Touda, we find Touda’s character sensual, sexual and unapologetically all woman. It’s a depiction that is not often present in films from the MENA. But then again, Ayouch and his wife are world cinema figures, not belonging to a particular regional discipline. Putting them in the MENA box would mean minimizing what they do.

So does Ayouch feel like he’s part of a global community of filmmakers, does that prove valuable when he needs advice or support? “I’m in touch with different people, some film directors, some not. I don’t want to have an environment that is too cinema centric,” he tells me. “I need to be in touch with people who come from very different backgrounds, who are involved in different occupations, people who, because of their difference and different experiences, are going to enrich and feed what I do, my own work and who are the heroes of their own daily lives.”

Finally, I’ve always wanted to know how Ayouch and Touzani first met. And am I glad I asked! “Whether it is a coup de chance or destiny, I don’t know, you can tell me,” he starts by saying. “One day Maryam knocked on my door, as a journalist, she was writing for a London guide of cinema and there was some “rubrique,” some section concerning each part of the world and she was writing about the Maghreb — North Africa,” then continues, explaining that “she used to live in London at that time, she studied there. And I said of course, she came to my office and did this interview, I took my time of course. We spoke more than two hours and the next day she came back and she never left.”

All images courtesy of the Festival de Cannes, used with permission.