After all was said and done, there were no losers at this year’s Marrakech International Film Festival, where audiences got a free taste of great cinema and Moroccan films made history.

For the first time in the history of the Festival, the jury, chaired by Jessica Chastain has awarded  the Étoile d’Or to a Moroccan film, with two other standouts from the Region receiving the Jury Prize ex æquo.

After nine days and nights of screenings, talks and industry meetings at this year’s Marrakech International Film Festival, Moroccan cinema made history. The country’s submissions to this year’s Academy Awards, The Mother of All Lies by Asmae El Moudir received the Étoile d’Or — the top prize awarded to a film in the Official Competition line up. The section is reserved for first and second time filmmakers and has seen the likes of Alexander Payne winning in 2004, with his Oscar-bound Sideways, which then went on to grab the Best Adapted Screenplay statuette at the 77th Academy Awards.  Payne was back in Marrakech this year, with The Holdovers, presenting latest film, which he called “an old-fashioned film…the kind of movie ‘they don’t make anymore’” in a statement to the Golden Globes voters.

The Jury Prize, from a multinational jury which included Australian actor and director Joel Edgerton, British director Joanna Hogg and US filmmaker Dee Rees, also went to films from the Region. The prize ex æquo went to the Casablanca crime film Hounds by Kamal Lazraq and the Palestinian documentary Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem. Bye Bye Tiberias features the story of Soualem’s famous thespian mother Hiam Abbass and the women in her family, as Palestinians exiles from their birth land. With all that is currently happening in the Region, the tragedy of the conflict throughout her homeland could be found on Abbass’s face, during all her appearances at this festival. 

All three of these winning films participated in past editions of the Atlas Workshops, the Festival's industry programme, now in its sixth year. 

A great time for Moroccan cinema

The Mother of All Lies is a reconstructed documentary retelling of a crucial moment in both the filmmaker’s own story and her country’s history. The film is directed, written, produced and edited by El Moudir and premiered in Cannes earlier this year. Working with a paper mache set constructed by El Moudir’s father, which represents their Casablanca neighborhood where the events took place, it features members of El Moudir’s family acting as themselves but also recreated as clay figurines, enacting past events. They include her feisty grandmother Zahra who participated in person at the gala screening inside Palais de Congres, where most of the festival activities were held.

“The walls have ears,” says Zahra in the film, alluding to how Morocco used to be back in the 1980’s. “Everyone thinks about that, that walls have ears, because they are still thinking about the past,” El Moudir said during our interview in Cannes, “but today Morocco is different — I can make this film today because we can speak freely today.” I met her in the Moroccan Pavilion there, something she pointed out as another sign of great political progress. 

Morocco feels different today. But also, Moroccan cinema has never been so celebrated. And inshallah, that’s a trend that will continue.

Historic Jury and great attendance for Marrakech’s 20th anniversary edition 

A “truly historic jury,” as Chastain called the group of six women and three men who made up this group hailing from five continents. Along with Chastain, Edgerton, Hogg and Rees, the jury comprised of Franco-Iranian actor Zar Amir, French actor Camille Cottin, Egyptian-born Swedish director Tarek Saleh, Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård; and Franco-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani.

The jury awarded the Best Directing Prize to Ramata-Toulaye Sy for her film Banel & Adama. while the prize for Best Performance by an Actress went to Asja Zara Lagumdzija for her role in Excursion by Una Gunjak, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the award for Best Performance by an Actor went to Doga Karakas for his role in the Turkish drama Dormitory by Nehir Tuna.

Audiences did their part, turning out in large numbers for the screenings and the festival's other programming. In all, nearly 21,000 people registered free of charge and obtained electronic accreditation. As in past years, the festival encouraged the attendance of young audiences, and around 8,000 schoolchildren and teenagers from the region witnessed screenings in the Cinema for Young Audiences programme. Among those, there were 750 young people from the Al Haouz region, which was deeply affected by the earthquake in September of this year.

Meetings of minds

One of the most beloved programme in the festival, year after year, is their “In Conversation With…” section which this year featured Australian actor and director Simon Baker, Indian filmmaker and producer Anurag Kashyap, US-Danish actor and director Viggo Mortensen, Scottish actor Tilda Swinton and Russian director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev. 

Among those talks, widely attended by young aspiring filmmakers from Morocco who were eager to ask questions, two featured this year’s recipients of the honorary Etoil d’Or — Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen and Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaïdi. At his tribute, Bensaïdi said, “today, I'm 25 years old – as a filmmaker – and I'm receiving a tribute — my next film won't be my seventh, but my first.” His words resonating in the crowd, “all my films are first films, cinema doesn't film certainties, it films doubt, flaws, accidents, and weakness.” On a personal note, I asked for an interview with Mikkelsen and seemed to be the only journalist turned down. It was disappointing, but probably the only sour note in an otherwise fantastic experience, so can’t complain… too much.

During his tribute on the opening night of the festival, Mikkelsen said “this is too much for someone who was young – it feels like yesterday – in Copenhagen, who never dreamt of being an actor, but who nevertheless had heroes he watched over and over again. It's too much that Marrakech has given me the chance to meet those heroes and share the stage with them.” He received his award from fellow thespian Willem Dafoe, who also met the public during a fascinating conversation. 

While the festival may have foregone parties and red carpets in favor of a more somber mood and a focus on cinema and its power to unify, festival audiences still managed to discovered 75 films from 36 countries. These were divided in sections which included the Official Competition, Gala Screenings, Special Screenings, The 11th Continent, a Panorama of Moroccan Cinema and Cinema for Young Audiences; as well as films shown as part of the Tribute series.

While the festival was definitely respectful of the conflict in the Region, as well as held a figurative candle up to the victims of the recent earthquake, the joy of those who created cinema, either for this edition or for future audiences, was palpable. And it confirmed even further that Marrakech is a festival with a soul, and a heart that beats cinema. Can’t wait to be back, inshallah.