The biennial Ouagadougou Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television (FESPACO) took place earlier this year between February 28th and March 7th.
Moroccan film-maker Hicham Ayouch won the Golden Stallion with “Fièvre”, a film about “Benjamin, 13, who decides to go and live with his father, Karim, whom he doesn’t know. Karim still lives with his parents and is drifting through life. He finds himself incapable of dealing with an insolent, impulsive adolescent who violently changes their lives in this neighbourhood with many faces.”
It’s the fourth time since the festival was created in 1969 that Morocco has won the Golden Stallion for Best Feature Film (1973 Souheil Ben Barka’s “Les mille et une mains”; 2001, Nabil Ayouch’s “Ali Zaoua” and 2011 Mohamed Mouftakir’s “Pégase”). At this year’s event another Moroccan production received awards: Abdelilah Eljouhary’s “De l’eau et du sang” which won the Golden Colt for Best Short. The Silver and Bronze Colts went to Malagasy director Luck Razanajoana for “Madame ESTHER” and Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid for “Zakaria”.
Algerian director Belkacem Hadjadj won the Silver Stallion for “Fadhma N’Soumer” and three other awards for the same film: Best Editing, Best Screenplay and Best Sound. Finally the Bronze Stallion went to the Burkina film-maker Sékou Traoré for “L’oeil du cyclone” .
The complete list of awards can be found here. The next FESPACO will be in 2017, between February 25th and March 4th.
Sources: fespaco.bf, le360.ma, aps.dz et letemps.dz
