This month marks the return of the Marrakech International Film Festival to the popular Moroccan tourist destination after a two-year absence caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
The event will feature Italian director Paolo Sorrentino presiding over the jury, along with British actress Tilda Swinton.
The festival, which runs from November 11 to 19, showcases up-and-coming filmmakers from around the globe who, in the words of Prince Moulay Rachid, who is in charge of the festival’s foundation, “form the cinema of future.”
Sorrentino, whose film “The Great Beauty” won a foreign-language Oscar in 2014, is joined by French actor Tahar Rahim, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki and German-American actress Diane Kruger.
Fourteen feature films from across the world, including six by women, will be in the running for the festival’s top prize, the Gold Star.
According to the festival’s artistic director Remi Bonhomme, it “brings together different cinematic worlds, through 76 films (representing) 33 countries across all continents.”
Guillermo del Toro, a Mexican filmmaker, remade the animated story “Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi.
Along with Swinton, who presided over the festival jury in 2018 and 2019, there will also be tributes to American director James Gray, Moroccan director Farida Benlyazid, and Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh.
Known for its conversational side events, the festival will give the public the chance to question Iran’s two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi.
US independent director Jim Jarmusch is also on the line-up, with events set to take place at a string of venues across the city with its famous red buildings.
Marrakesh’s iconic Jamaa El-Fna square will host outdoor screenings of science fiction epic “Dune” and James Gray’s “Ad Astra”.
The city’s famous Yves Saint Laurent museum will also host the “11th continent” collection of recently restored archive films, including “Muna moto” (1975) by Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa or “Beirut the Encounter” (1981) by Lebanon’s Borhane Alaouie.
Other screenings will include films that have already debuted recently at top festivals, including “No Bears” by Iran’s Jafar Panahi, who has been detained in Iran since July.
The film received the Special Jury Prize at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.
There will also be a screening of the legal drama “Saint Omer,” directed by Frenchwoman Alice Diop and winner of the Venice Silver Lion.
The Atlas Workshops, a program that assists emerging filmmakers from Africa and the Middle East with development and post-production while also awarding prizes, will be held in conjunction with the celebrations.
Omar El Zohairy, an Egyptian director who had previously won, received the Grand Prize for his scathing film “Feathers” at Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique in July.
