The 17th Angoulême Francophone Film Festival (FFA), from August 27th to September 1st, devoted part of its programme to Moroccan cinema.
Each year the Festival has a rich programme, combining new productions with older classic francophone films. A competition, previews, a film concert, an open-air screening and many other events enhanced this year’s festival.
Placing Morocco at the heart of the programme gave audiences the chance to watch 19 films from Morocco’s past. Five films by the well-known director Nabil Ayouch were screened, including his 2011 documentary My Land. This film gives a voice to older Palestinian refugees who fled their homeland in 1948 and never returned, living for more than 60 years in Lebanese camps. Nabil Ayouch directs their words at young Israelis who are building their country, who feel viscerally attached to their land but cannot really explain why.
Mustapha Derkaoui’s De quelques évènements sans signification (1975) was also part of this special programme. An important example of 1970’s socially committed cinema, it follows a team of film-makers in search of a subject. As they are interviewing young people from Casablanca about their expectations and their thoughts about Moroccan cinema, the film-makers witness the death of a foreman on the docks, unintentionally killed by one of his workers. That, they realise, must be their subject.
Sources: France Télévisions, FFA
