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Screen International has named the five actors and filmmakers selected for Arab Stars of Tomorrow 2024, the eighth edition of the new talent programme for emerging Middle East and North Africa talents.

This year’s line-up includes Moroccan actress Oumaima Barid; Saudi actress Maria Bahrawi; Yemeni producer Mohsen Alkhalfi; Egyptian actor Essam Omar; and Jordanian writer-director Zain Duraie.

Arab Stars of Tomorrow celebrates Arab talent from across the Mena region and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors who are primed to make their mark in the international industry.

Click on the links below to read the profiles of this year’s stars.

Abdellah Taïa’s Cabo Negro introduces us to Jaafar and Soundouss, two young friends from Casablanca who are hoping to enjoy a relaxed summer getaway. The film is set in the coastal town of Cabo Negro, Morocco, where the pair arrive at a lush villa that Jaafar’s American lover Jonathan said they could use. But upon reaching the idyllic beachfront property, they discover Jonathan never showed up as planned.

Left to their own devices and with an uncertain situation, Jaafar and Soundouss settle in and try to make the most of their unexpected change in plans. They relax along the shore and spend leisurely days inside the lavish home, its decor offering a window into faraway worlds.

However, money slowly runs low with no sign of Jonathan. Facing an unclear future, the two friends will have to find a way to sustain themselves in an environment not always welcoming to people in their situation.

Abdellah Taïa’s sophomore feature is described as “a queer ode to the seemingly carefree time of youth,” but it proves a little too carefree in its depiction of two young people whiling away time in the Moroccan beach resort that gives the film its title. Although boasting languidly sensual atmosphere to spare thanks to its setting and sexy, young lead performers, Cabo Negro, receiving its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, ultimately proves frustrating with its purposefully oblique narrative.

The story, such as it is, revolves around Jaafar (Youness Beye, Ghosts of Beirut) and his female friend Soundouss (Oumaima Barid, Animalia), who arrive at a lavish villa rented by Jaafar’s lover, Jonathan, who is supposed to arrive later. But he doesn’t show up, and isn’t responding to Jaafar’s messages. So the pair sit around, spending time hanging out at the beach, leafing...

Oumaima Barid in Animalia Photo: Wrong Films & Srab Films

A big hit on the festival circuit and now in cinemas in the US, Sofia Alaoui’s Animalia is an extraordinary feature début which promises a still more extraordinary future career. I was delighted when the director agreed to discuss it, and although we had no translator to assist, she had plenty to say.

The film follows a young, pregnant woman who has married into a wealthy family. When she’s alone in their remote mansion, a strange incident occurs, with military units rushing to surround the nearby lake. It’s just the start of an extraterrestrial engagement that will plunge her world into chaos, but the journey that follows has unexpected consequences, leading her to reevaluate her life and the society she’s part of.

Animalia Photo: Wrong Films & Srab Films

I fell in love with the film, I tell Sofia,...

A powerful statement of intent from first time feature director Sofia Alaoui, and deserving winner of the New Visions award at Sundance, Animalia opens with a series of gorgeously framed symmetrical shots, exterior and then interior, which recall the work of Stanley Kubrick. They’re beautiful partly because of the house they depict, an elegant lakeside Moroccan mansion, but as we’ll soon see, they provide only a taster of what Alaoui can do. They depict a life not only wealthy but perfectly ordered, every detail where it is intended to be. Only Itto (Oumaima Barid) is out of place, attracting scowls from her mother in law when she is caught in the kitchen, chatting to the servants, getting raw meat on the sleeves of her orange silk robe.

“She wanted you to marry a rich girl, not a hick, a nobody’s daughter,” she later laments to her husband,...

"Don't let fear stop you." Dark Star Pictures has revealed the official US trailer for an impressive indie sci-fi mystery thriller titled Animalia, a French-Moroccan production about a pregnant woman in Morocco. This initially premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival last year and it also played at plenty of other major festivals throughout 2023, including Vancouver and London. The film won a Sundance New Vision award and brings "the arrival of a new, freshly original cinematic voice" in French-Moroccan director Sofia Alaoui. As she nears the end of her pregnancy, Itto and her in-laws find their lives changed by a supernatural event. A story about a woman who discoverers emancipation when aliens arrive in Morocco. That's the big pitch, though there's also an intriguing psychological thriller angle to this story as well. Starring Oumaïma Barid as Itto, Mehdi Dehbi, Fouad Oughaou, and Souad Khouyi. It's arriving on VOD to watch next...

Dubai-based sales company Mad World has taken global rights to feminist drama “The Wound,” which marks the directorial debut of Morocco’s Seloua El Gouni, who has experience as a production manager on Hollywood titles such as “A Hologram for the King” and “Men in Black: International.”

“The Wound” (“La Plaie”) stars rising Arab talent Oumaïma Barid, who gained global notice in Sofia Alaoui’s 2023 Sundance title “Animalia.” Barid plays a young woman named Leila who is trying to pursue her passions and ambitions while contending with Morocco’s societal constraints and becomes pregnant in an extramarital love affair.

The promising drama’s Moroccan A-list cast also comprises rising star Brice Bexter; Amal Ayouch (“Eye on Juliet”); Mansour Badri (“Ghosts of Beirut”); Soraya Azzabi (“Billie’s Magic World”); Abdelhak Saleh (“Hounds”); and Sami Fekkak (“Testament: Story of Moses”).

“The Wound” is being produced by El Gouni and Taha Benghalem through their Marrakech-based company Pink Sheep Productions,...

Film Clinic is set to dominate the lineup of the highly anticipated third edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival — which is scheduled to run from Nov 30, 2023 – Sat, Dec 9, 2023 — with the prolific production and distribution shingle boasting four of its titles in the festival. Coming in first in Arab Spectacular section titles Hajjan and Four Daughters. In Competition — Backstage and showcasing in the Festival Favourites section — Animalia.

Hajjan

Abu Bakr Shawky's latest Hajjan, produced by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) & Film Clinic. It had its World Premiere in the Toronto International Film Festival.– It is also produced by Mohamed Hefzy and Majed Zuhair Samman, co-produced by The

Imaginarium Films' Rula Nasser, and distributed by Film Clinic Indie Distribution in the Arab world while Film Constellation has the

worldwide rights. It revolves around brothers Matar and Ghanim, who live in the endless desert of Saudi Arabia.

For writer-director Sofia Alaoui, winning the Short Film Grand Jury Prize for Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent (So What If the Goats Die) at the Sundance Film Festival and the Best Short Film at the César Awards three years ago opened literal doors. Those wins raised Alaoui’s international profile and gave her the opportunity to get her first, feature-length script, Animalia, a science-fiction drama set in contemporary Morocco, into production. By turns esoteric, enigmatic, and hermetic, Animalia marks the arrival of a new, freshly original cinematic voice, albeit an atypical, idiosyncratic, unorthodox one. When we first meet Animalia’s central character, Itto (Oumaima Barid), a heavily pregnant woman in her late 20s, she’s breaking the inflexible, unspoken rules of her adopted home and the wealthy family...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Animalia Review — Animalia (2023) Film Review from the 46th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Sofia Alaoui and starring Oumaïma Barid, Mehdi Dehbi, Souad Khouyi and Fouad Oughaou. Filmmaker Sofia Alaoui’s new film, Animalia, is a work of great complexity but there’s a lack of depth to the film’s ambiguous [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Animalia: Sofia Alaoui’s Film is Compelling but its Mysterious Plot Needs More of a Resolve [Sundance 2023]...

Born to a French mother, a Moroccan father and raised for some years in China, filmmaker Sofia Alaoui grants that her upbringing had a more international expanse than most. The same could be said for her spiritual education, which pulled from Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and Taoist traditions, giving the “Animalia” director a considerable leg-up on the comparative religion front.

But for all her varied influences, once Alaoui came-of-age and into adulthood she shared a familiar sense of a yearning, feeling no less stifled than those raised in more, shall we say, provincial circumstances.

“We’re all trapped by our own dogmas,” the filmmaker tells Variety. “And I didn’t want to stay locked in a set system. Be they religious or social, those values guide our existences as men and women. And I think the most beautiful path is to break free, to separate yourself order to clear your own way.

Sofia Alaoui, short film grand jury prize winner at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, debuted her feature, Animalia, on January 20. The film stars scene-stealer Oumaïma Barid in an emotionally transformative role that is a standout of the festival. It contains stunning visuals thanks to cinematographer Noé Bach and a haunting score from Amine Bouhafa. A love letter to existential inquisition and class dissection, Alaoui’s film is mysterious and imaginative in all the best ways a project can be.

Itto (Oumaïma Barid), a very pregnant wife to successful businessman Amine (Mehdi Debhi), dreams of a day with peace and quiet away from his snooty family. When she finally gets her wish, Itto spends her day dancing through the halls of opulent décor and snacking on candy without the judgment of her elitist mother-in-law. But when the government declares a state of emergency due to ominous encounters, Itto longs to reunite with her family.

A careful camera takes note of the placid symmetries of a gated house in a desert location. A fountain flows in the courtyard. A chandelier hangs in the hallway. Rococo chairs share plush rooms with Middle Eastern mosaics under elaborate wooden ceilings — a clash of aesthetic influences that signify wealth even above geography or culture. In the kitchen, Itto (an excellent Oumaïma Barid) — beautiful, young, heavily pregnant — chats cheerfully with the staff, relaxed and easy. Until, that is, her mother-in-law enters and a frosty hush settles. Director Sofia Alaoui sets up “Animalia” as an intimate dissection of the foibles and hypocrisies of Morocco’s moneyed classes. But Amine Bouhafa’s fine score, all ominous cello and somber bass, suggests that something more profound and destabilizing than the class divide is lying in wait, just beyond the hazy horizon.

Alaoui’s award-winning short film “So What If the Goats Die,” which was also gorgeously,...

I am of the firm belief that we are not the only forms of life out there. I don't believe that aliens have been secretly guiding humanity or anything like that — that's a conspiratorial mindset that can get really bigoted, really fast. However, I believe it's selfish to believe that humans are the only life in our vast galaxy. As to what forms these extraterrestrial beings take, that's something I'm not equipped to answer definitively. Maybe they're the little grey aliens of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" fame, or maybe they are more humanoid. Perhaps they don't have a form at all, being invisible to the naked eye, but present nonetheless.

To "Animalia" director Sofia Alaoui, aliens can be more intertwined with humanity than we might think. The French-Moroccan filmmaker's directorial debut envisions alien invasions to be personal and abstract, truly something that can't be easily comprehended. Maybe they...

In her promising debut feature, Animalia, Moroccan writer-director Sofia Alaoui doesn’t turn the global catastrophe scenario on its head as much as she flips it sideways.

The film, which makes its world premiere in Sundance, starts off on familiar enough ground, following a very pregnant young woman, Itto (photogenic newcomer Oumaïma Barid), as she’s stranded from her new husband, Amine (Mehdi Dehbi), while a mysterious supernatural catastrophe occurs right outside their country estate.

But if Animalia begins like small-scale Roland Emmerich, it ends up more like Terrence Malick, with Alaoui eschewing your typical action-packed finale and taking things in much more of a mystical direction. This, along with her keen commentary on religion, social class and the place of women in contemporary Morocco, could give the film a boost in a marketplace already crowded with lots of doomsday content.

An extension of the director’s 2020 short, So What If the Goats Die,...