The 17th Marrakesh International Film Festival opened on November 30th at the Palais des Congrès with the screening of Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate. The director’s sixth feature is about the last years of Vincent Van Gogh’s life, performed by actor Willem Dafoe.
After a year’s absence the festival made its comeback with many new features. Among them, a series of “conversations” between the audience and cinema professionals. The public were able to meet film directors, actors and personalities – Martin Scorsese, Robert de Niro, Guillermo Del Toro, Agnès Varda, Yousry Nasrallah, Christian Mungiu and Thierry Frémaux.
Another new feature, this time for professionals, were the atlas workshops, which took place from December 2nd to 5th with 130 participants. This new programme is to help emerging film-makers from Africa and the Middle East develop their scripts. Specifically it is for first, second or third feature films. 8 projects in development and 6 films in post-production were selected. 2 prizes were awarded for the best projects: one worth €20,000 to a film in post-production and the other worth €10,000 for a project under development. For its first year the atlas workshops, a really creative platform for film people to meet each other, focussed on film music by putting directors in touch with composers.
On the competition side, the festival’s official selection consisted almost entirely of first or second films. Artistic Director Christoph Terhechte defined the selection as “daring films, of great quality, with an impressive level of technical mastery”. The jury, chaired by American director James Gray, had the difficult task of deciding the best out of the 14 films from 13 countries (Mexico, Austria, United States, Japan, Serbia, Morocco).
In addition to the films in official competition, audiences watched nearly 80 films screened throughout the festival, with, among other things, a section of Moroccan cinema and a young audience section.
Finally, the festival paid tribute to Agnès Varda, Robert De Niro, Robin Wright and Jillali Ferhati, giving each of them a Gold Star for their entire career.
The festival closed on December 8th.
Sources: https://www.huffpostmaghreb.com, https://www.francetvinfo.fr/
