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After breaking ground with his 2021 movie “Casablanca Beats,” which marked the first Moroccan feature to vie for a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, filmmaker Nabil Ayouch (“Much Loved”) is achieving a new milestone with his latest movie, “Everybody Loves Touda,” which premiered at Cannes Premiere and is now eligible in all categories at the Oscars. It’s the first Moroccan film to do so.

“Everybody Loves Touda,” penned by Ayouch and his wife, the actor-turned-filmmaker Maryam Touzani (“The Blue Caftan”), tells the story a young poetess and singer known as a Shaeirat (Nisrin Erradi), who raises her deaf-mute son in a small Moroccan village. Hoping to give her son a better future and more opportunities in life, she moves with him to Casablanca where she faces setbacks. Erradi, who previously starred in Touzani’s feature debut, “Adam,” prepared for the part in “Everybody Loves Touda” for a...

The film Fugue takes us on a profound journey. Directed by Mary Jimenez and Bénédicte Liénard, it tells the story of Saor, who accompanies the remains of his lover Valentina back to her hometown in the Peruvian Amazon. What begins as a solemn trip soon becomes an emotional quest as Saor encounters people who knew Valentina in the past, when she was known by her given name, Pol. Bit by bit, Saor discovers the truth about Valentina’s history and death, uncovering a side to her life that was full of fear and sorrow under the severe persecution faced by LGBTQ individuals.

The directors craft this deeply moving tale using a mix of fiction and real testimony. Non-actors who had real experiences share their stories with natural sincerity. Through Saor, we learn about the horrific acts committed against LGBTQ people during Peru’s civil war in a way that is both respectful and impactful.

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Mexico in 1986, Mexico 86 shines a light on one woman’s battle between revolutionary zeal and maternal love. From acclaimed director Cesar Diaz comes this intimate portrait of Maria, a rebel activist forced to flee her home country of Guatemala amidst that nation’s brutal civil war. Living in exile a decade later, Maria juggles secret missions against the dictatorship with her newly reunited role as mother to young son Marco.

Based closely on Diaz’s own experiences growing up, the film transports us to a time and place that shaped his life. As a child in war-torn Guatemala, Diaz knew both the thrill and pain of political upheaval through his mother’s courageous yet conflicting path. Now a filmmaker, he honors her memory with this deeply felt drama exploring what it means to be a mother in the midst of revolution. With sensitivity and care,...

The trailer has debuted for “Fugue” (Fuga), which is world premiering simultaneously at the Edinburgh and Lima film festivals. The hybrid feature is directed by Mary Jiménez and Bénédicte Liénard.

Lima will fete Jiménez with a tribute, screening three of her most celebrated works: “Del Verbo Amar,” “Loco Lucho” and “In the Name of Tania.”

“Fugue” takes place deep in the Peruvian Amazon, where the terrorist group Shining Path’s bloodthirsty violence and homophobia collide to devastating effect. A young shaman (Saor Sax) accompanies Valentina’s body back to the village for burial.

“Fuga” is the continuation of the filmmakers’ last film, “In the Name of Tania,” which was also shot in the Peruvian Amazon. They said: “’Fuga’ explores the stories of homosexuals persecuted by the Tupac Amaru and Shining Path terrorist groups during the ‘dirty war’ in Peru (1970-2000). This generation, which survived persecution in silence and shame, has...

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival was officially closed yesterday, on May 25, 2024, as the prizes for the movies and the actors were awarded at the closing ceremony. It was a very exciting and content-filled event, and we have also reported on numerous movies that had their premiere at Cannes, some of which were received well, while others… not so much. But, naturally, everyone wants to know who won and who lost at Cannes, and that is what we are going to report about in this article.

The article will be divided into two main sections. The first one will list all the juries at Cannes, since they are the ones who chose the winners at the film festival, so we think that it is only fair that you know who picked the winners. After that, we are going to list all the winners in each of the categories.

As we have said,...

Simon of the Mountain, the debut feature from Argentinian director Federico Luis, has won the Grand Prize at the 63rd edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

Argentinian actor and singer/songwriter Lorenzo Ferro stars in the coming-of-age story of a young man struggling with a mental disorder. Luxbox is handling international sales on the film.

Blue Sun Palace from U.S.-Chinese filmmaker Constance Tsang won the French Touch Prize of the Jury for best first feature in the Cannes sidebar. The drama is a look at the lives of Chinese immigrants living in Queens. Charades are selling Blue Sun Palace internationally, with WME representing rights in North America.

The Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for best actor went to Ricardo Teodoro for his performance in the Queer romantic drama Baby from Brazilian director Marcelo Caetano, where Teodoro plays an outsider trying to survive in the mean streets of São Paolo.

Argentinian director Federico Luis’s first film Simon of the Mountain has won the Grand Prize at the 63rd edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

The coming-of-age tale stars rising Argentinian actor, singer and song writer Lorenzo Ferro as a young man grappling with the challenges of a mental disorder.

It is produced by Patricio Alvarez Casado at Argentinian production house 20/20 in coproduction with Fernando Bascuñan at Chilean company Planta, Ignacio Cucucovich’s Uruguayan company Mother Superior and L.A. and Mexico City based producer Carlos Rincones at Twelve Thirty Media, with Luxbox handling international sales.

In other key prizes, U.S.-Chinese filmmaker Constance Tsang’s won the French Touch Prize of the Jury for first feature Blue Sun Palace, a bittersweet chronicle of the tumultuous destiny of Chinese immigrants living in Queens.

It is produced by Eli Raskin at Field Trip Media and Tony Yang at Big Buddha Productions,...

IndieWire has published its Cannes 2024 Cinematography Survey. We analyzed the data to explore (again and again) that the nine-year-old camera, Arri Alexa Mini, is the most popular camera among Cannes filmmakers. Furthermore, interestingly, in its first appearance on the Cannes Cinematography Chart and jumped straight to second place, is the Arri 35.

The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography

The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.

Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)

As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...

The very title of “Everybody Loves Touda” poses a kind of challenge to viewers. If everybody loves Touda, dare you not? Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s forthright musical drama certainly doesn’t permit much room for dissent. From first gilded frame to last, the film is besotted with its eponymous heroine, a fiery small-town singer aspiring to the status of ‘Sheikhat’ — a revered class of diva versed in the poetic traditions of historical Aita music. With scene after scene conceived to emphasize Touda’s strength of character and depth of talent, it’s just as well star Nisrin Erradi is sufficiently magnetic not to buckle under the weight of the film’s devotion to her.

As a dramatic construction, however, Touda is more fabulous than she is intrinsically fascinating, characterized predominantly by determined ambition and glittering, show-must-go-on resolve. Ayouch’s script, written in collaboration with his wife and fellow filmmaker...

French producer Sylvie Pialat will replace Spanish director Rogrigo Sorogoyen as Cannes Critics’ Week president.

“Due to personal circumstances, and much to our regret, Rodrigo Sorogoyen has had to step down as president of the jury for the 63rd Semaine de la Critique,” Critics’ Week said on Saturday (May 11).

The 11th-hour changeover will also see French filmmaker Iris Kaltenback join the jury alongside previously announced members Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, Belgian director of photography Virginie Surdej, and Canadian journalist and film critic Ben Croll.

Pialat was originally on the jury, and will now act as the group’s president.

Pialat...

Cannes Critics’ Week has appointed French producer Sylvie Pialat as president of the jury for its upcoming edition after Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who was originally announced for the role, was forced to cancel for personal reasons.

French director Iris Kaltenbäck has also been been named as a new jury member. Her first film The Rapture premiered to acclaim in Critics’ Week last year. The drama, starring Hafsia Herzi as a midwife who passes off her best friend’s newborn child as her own, won the Prix Sacd.

Previously announced members of the jury include Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (Augure by Baloji, My New Friends, Haven of Grace), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej (The Blue Caftan, Our Mothers, Casablanca Beats), and Canadian film critic and journalist Ben Croll.

Producer Pialat spent the first part of her cinema career collaborating with her husband Maurice Pialat, co-writing the screenplays for a number of...

Cannes’ Critics Week has rounded out the jury for its 63rd edition running running May 15-23.

The previously announced Spanish writer-director-producer Rodrigo Sorogoyen will preside over the festival’s parallel selection dedicated to first and second features alongside Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, French producer Sylvie Pialat, Belgian director of photography Virginie Surdej, and Canadian journalist and film critic Ben Croll.

Sorogoyen is known for psychological thriller The Beasts which premiered in the Cannes Premiere strand in 2022 and won nine Goya awards, plus 2019 drama Mother, 2018 Spanish-French thriller The Realm, 2016 crime thriller May God Save Us, 2013 romantic drama Stockholm, and 2008’s 8 Dates co-directed with Peris Romano.

Cannes Critics’ Week has unveiled the jury members for its upcoming 63rd edition, who join previously announced jury president Rodrigo Sorogoyen.

They are Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (Augure by Baloji, My New Friends, Haven of Grace), French producer Sylvie Pialat (Timbuktu, Staying Vertical, The Whistlers), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej (The Blue Caftan, Our Mothers, Casablanca Beats), and Canadian film critic and journalist Ben Croll.

The section, which is overseen by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, focuses on first and second features as well as shorts by emerging talents.

Sorogoyen and his jury will decide the winners of the Semaine de la Critique Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for best actor and actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery for best short film.

The traditionally compact selection of 11 features, seven in competition, and a competitive and non-competitive shorts line-up,...

Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (“Augure by Baloji,” “My New Friends”), French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu,” “Staying Vertical”), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej and Canadian film critic, journalist and frequent Variety contributor Ben Croll have been named on the jury for the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.

The four will now join Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who last week was named Critics’ Week jury president, with the group set to choose the sidebar competition’s award winners, including the Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star award for best actor or actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.

The 2024 Critics Week lineup is set to be unveiled on April 15, four days after the Cannes official selection is announced on April 11.

Last year, Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” director Audrey Diwan presided over a Critics...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is expanding its membership.

According to a press release, the organization that hands out Oscars each year at the Academy Awards has extended invitations to join the Academy to 398 artists and executives who have made notable contributions to the motion picture industry.

“The Academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership. They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang in a joint statement.

Read More: The Academy Announces 2024 Oscars Date As Well As Submission Deadline

There are some big names and familiar faces among the invitees, including musicians Taylor Swift and David Byrne, and numerous actors, ranging from Selma Blair to Keke Palmer to “Elvis” Oscar nominee Austin Butler.

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan, Daniel Kwan, and Daniel Scheinert, recent acting nominees Austin Butler, Paul Mescal, and Stephanie Hsu, and bold-face names for the extremely online like Taylor Swift, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. The Weeknd), and Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav were among the 398 people announced as new members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday.

“The academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership. They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide,” said academy CEO Bill Kramer and academy president Janet Yang in a joint statement.

This year’s class of new members is heavy on 2022 breakouts, like the aforementioned Kwan and Scheinert – invitees in both the directors’ brand and the producers’ branch. In keeping with academy practice,...

It’s that time of year again — the break between Cannes and the fall festivals, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes its membership invitations. The Oscars group said today that it has extended offers to 398 artists and execs — one more than last year — who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to motion pictures.

The list includes actors, directors, writers, producers, musicians, executives, artist reps, publicists and below-the-liners such as casting directors, cinematographers, costume designers, film editors, makeup artists and hairstylists, production designers and sound pros.

“The Academy is proud to welcome these artists and professionals into our membership,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a statement. “They represent extraordinary global talent across cinematic disciplines and have made a vital impact on the arts and sciences of motion pictures and on movie fans worldwide.”

As usual, the invitees include newly minted Oscar winners,...

Hanging Gardens Hanging Gardens has been named best film at the 7th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which were presented at Cannes Film Festival.

The Iraq-set film directed by Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji tells the story of a young boy who finds a sex doll on a rubbish dump on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The awards are run by the Arab Cinema Centre and were voted on by 193 film critics from 72 countries.

Lubna Azabal won the best actress award for her role in Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan, which led the nominations and which also picked up the awards for best screenplay for Touzani and cinematography for Virginie Surdej.

The best directing and editing awards went to Youssef Chebbi and Valentin Féron respectively for Tunisian thriller Ashkal.

Adam Bessa, was named best actor for Harka. The best documentary went to Jumana Manna for Foragers, which considers the conflict over foraged food.

Women have held vital positions in filmmaking since the beginning of its history. Based on our current knowledge, the first credited female director of photography (Dp) is Italian Rosina Cianelli in 1915, but there are earlier examples in US magazines. Cinematography is traditionally a male profession. It is a technical and physical job, involving endurance and heavy lifting, which have not been thought of as something that women were good at. But as time goes by, many women have broken the stereotype, and secured their place in this line of work by making films across genres. Today, women cinematographers are still a minority, and widespread recognition of their contribution is still overdue. To appreciate their efforts, the Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hkac) presents this programme with their partners to introduce their work, accompanied by after-screening talks with them or their directors.

There have also been more women taking up creative roles in Hong Kong filmmaking.

Morocco’s ‘The Blue Caftan’ wins a hat-trick of awards.

Iraq director Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji’s Hanging Gardens has been named best film at the 7th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which will celebrate its winners in Cannes today.

Al Daradji’s directorial feature debut premiered at Venice and went on to win best film at the Red Sea International Film Festival in December. The film follows a 12-year-old boy living as a rubbish picker in the dumps of Baghdad, nicknamed the ‘hanging gardens’, who finds a discarded US sex doll. True Colours handles sales.

This year’s edition of the awards,...

The Blue Caftan by Moroccan director and Cannes 2023 Jury member Maryam Touzani has topped the nominations in the seventh edition of the Critics Awards for Arab Films.

The portrait of marriage and stifled sexuality, starring Saleh Bakri and Lubna Azabal has been nominated in seven categories including best film, actor, actress, director, screenplay, cinematography and music.

The film world premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2022 and went on to be Morocco’s best international film submission for the 2023 Academy Awards making it as far as the first long list.

The Critics Awards for Arab Films are overseen by the Arab Cinema Centre and judged by 193 critics from 72 countries. The winners will be announced at a ceremony during Cannes.

To qualify for consideration, films need to have premiered at international film festivals outside of the Arab world in 2022; involve at least one Arab world production company, and be feature-length.

Other...

Three categories have been added to this year’s awards.

Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan leads the nominations in the 7th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which has added categories for best editing, cinematography and music.

The Arabic-language drama, in which a woman and her closeted gay husband hire a young apprentice at their caftan store, secured seven nominations – every category except editing and documentary. The film premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year and was Morocco’s submission for the international feature film Oscar, making the shortlist but not final nominations.

A strong showing...

Written and directed by Maryam Touzani, The Blue Caftan, which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, understands the depth of honesty and its effect on love. Two people who have shared their lives know better than most their secrets. For the couple at the center of the film, they are more than just each other’s confidantes — they truly see one another, and offer compassion, support, and tenderness. Beautifully crafted, The Blue Caftan weaves together the nuanced tale of a couple's love story and history in an intricate, gentle, and profound way.

Halim (Saleh Bakri) and Mina (Lubna Azabal) run a caftan shop together. Halim does the sewing, while Mina handles the customers. The couple’s shop has been struggling; Halim prefers to make the caftans by hand, but without proper help, he can only work on so many and customers become impatient, threatening to take their business elsewhere. Halim...

Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier’s documentary “Dreaming Walls,” about the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York and its controversial renovation, has unveiled a trailer.

The film world premieres in the Panorama section of the Berlinale on Saturday.

The Chelsea Hotel, an icon of 1960s counterculture, was a haven for famous artists and intellectuals including Patti Smith, Janis Joplin and the superstars of Warhol’s Factory. However, the building’s lengthy renovation into a luxury hotel, which has spanned more than 10 years, has been a source of ongoing frustration for its tenants, as dozens of them, many in their later years, still live amid scaffolding and constant construction.

Against this chaotic backdrop, the film travels through the hotel’s storied halls, exploring the bohemian origins that contributed to the Chelsea’s mythical stature.

“Dreaming Walls” is produced by Hanne Phlypo and Quentin Laurent. Co-producers are Frédéric de Goldschmidt, Simone van den Broek...

After her successful debut “Wolf and Sheep” (2016), which premiered to awards at Cannes’ Quinzanne selection, the only female filmmaker from Afghanistan to achieve such success, Shahrbanoo Sadat, got back to the festival circuit with its follow-up “The Orphanage”, the intended second instalment of the pentalogy based on the diaries of her writer friend Anwar Hashimi. It premiered last year at the same section of Cannes, before heading up on a long festival tour with the last stop (for now at least) at Zagreb Film Festival, where it played in the main competition.

“The Orphanage” is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

The slightly fantastical drama “Wolf and Sheep” was partly centred around the boy named Qodrat (Quodratollah Qadiri) and his growing up in rural Afghanistan. In “The Orphanage”, we follow him through his teenage years spent in the titular institution in the country’s capital Kabul at...

“You have to change it because you didn’t choose it.” The defiant mantra that evolves over the course of Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s scrappy but heartfelt hip-hop street-musical “Casablanca Beats,” his third time in Cannes but first time in competition, could be a rallying cry for any youth activism group, anywhere in the world. But it’s the specificity of the setting, in the music room of an embattled Casablanca arts center, where a motley collection of local adolescents bond, bicker and brag through the medium of hip-hop, that gives Ayouch’s film the buzz of real-life resistance emerging in real time, demonstrating how music builds into a movement.

This is filmmaking as celebration and also intervention — in casting the center’s real attendees as fictionalized versions of themselves, Ayouch is not just telling the story of the notorious Casablanca neighborhood of Sidi Moumen that he, as a longtime resident of the city,...

IndieWire reached out to the directors of photography whose feature films are premiering at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival to find out which cameras and lenses they used and, more importantly, why these were the right tools to create the look and visual language of these highly anticipated films.

Page 1: Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)

Page 2: Out of Competition, Premieres, and Special Screenings

Page 3: Un Certain Regard and Critics’ Week

Page 4: Directors’ Fortnight

(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)

Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)

“Annette”

Dir: Leos Carax, DoP: Caroline Champetier

Format: Raw Xocn Xt 4K and 6K

Camera: 2 Sony Venice and 2 Sony Alpha 7Sii

Lens: Zeiss Supreme, Optimo Angenieux 48-76mm, Optimo Angenieux 25-250mm

Champetier: We needed a camera that was good with blacks and colors, and for now the Sony Venice is performing on both of these points. On a Carax movie, each...

After her successful debut “Wolf and Sheep” (2016), which premiered to awards at Cannes’ Quinzanne selection, the only female filmmaker from Afghanistan to achieve such success, Shahrbanoo Sadat, got back to the festival circuit with its follow-up “The Orphanage”, the intended second instalment of the pentalogy based on the diaries of her writer friend Anwar Hashimi. It premiered last year at the same section of Cannes, before heading up on a long festival tour with the last stop (for now at least) at Zagreb Film Festival, where it played in the main competition.

The slightly fantastical drama “Wolf and Sheep” was partly centred around the boy named Qodrat (Quodratollah Qadiri) and his growing up in rural Afghanistan. In “The Orphanage”, we follow him through his teenage years spent in the titular institution in the country’s capital Kabul at the dusk of the Soviet rule there. We meet him (the non-professional...

El Gouna Ff 2019: ‘Adam’ in Feature Narrative Competition‘Adam’, the debut feature by Moroccan director Maryam Touzani was awarded the El Gouna Bronze Star for Narrative Film.

Adam is a beautiful chamber piece about two vulnerable women: Samia (Nisrine Erradi), an unwed pregnant woman in this conservative Arab country who shows up in Casablanca’s Medina looking for a job and a place to spend the night, and Alba (Lubna Azabal), a young widow with an eight-year-old daughter (Douae Belkhaouda), who begrudgingly takes her in. Their relationship grows along with the pregnant woman’s baby and with their own emotional healing and development. Adam is a women’s meditation on life and the family.

The relationship between the two woman and the young daughter of the widow develops bit by bit and each step brings the viewer into their small circle. By the end, one feels a part of the family they have created.

With her debut feature “Adam,” Maryam Touzani allows her audience to sit back and relax comfortably into a beautifully made, character-driven little gem that knows when and how to touch all the right buttons. Taking the stories of two women, both frozen in existential stasis, and bringing them together in a predictable yet deeply satisfying manner, the writer-director ensures this scrupulously even two-hander about grief, shame, and the redemption of motherhood doles out emotional comfort food that’s neither too sweet nor too heavy. Graced by two exceptional leads given every opportunity to shine, “Adam” should charm audiences in global art houses.

Previously, Touzani has been known for shorts and her work with husband Nabil Ayouch, who here acts as producer as well as writing collaborator. Still, this is very much her own film, its emotional tenor and cinematic style markedly different from Ayouch’s work. In terms of structure and narrative trajectory,...

Talented Swedish-born documentary director Anna Eborn has an affinity for communities that exist outside space and time, locating people whose lives are spent in areas that don’t conform to common notions of 21st century globalization. In “Pine Ridge,” she turned her camera on Native Americans in a South Dakota reservation; in “Lida” she spent time with an elderly woman in Eastern Ukraine, one of the last speakers of an old Swedish dialect. Now she’s followed a group of teens in Transnistria, a breakaway republic largely unrecognized internationally, sitting between Moldova and Ukraine, which seems determined to maintain a Soviet lifestyle.

“Transnistra” (without the penultimate “i” in the territory’s name) moves through the four seasons, focusing on Tanya, a charismatic young woman trailing a posse of boys who shift through friendship, rivalry and puppy love in the usual hormonal adolescent manner. Attractively lensed in handheld 16mm by Virginie Surdej...

Positive School

French-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch will have his seventh feature Positive School ready in 2019. The French-Moroccan production has been backed by Ali N’ Productions (Morocco) and Les Films du Nouveau Monde (France), with Paris-based media Unité de Production also co-producing. Ayouch reunites with his Razzia (2017) Dp Virginie Surdej as they work with a set of non-professional actors in what has been described as shot docu style, a hip-hop musical, which promises to be much lighter than the Moroccan social issue dramas Ayouch has tackled previously. One of the most prominent and internationally renowned Arab filmmakers in contemporary cinema, Ayouch’s 1999 debut Mektoub played in the Berlin Forum.…...

The Orphanage

Afghan writer-director Shahrbanoo Sadat should be ready with her sophomore feature The Orphanage in 2019. Produced through Katja Adomeit of Adomeit Film, the Danish-Polish production will feature a cast of non-professional Afghans with filming to commence in Denmark and Poland. Sadat will return to work with Dp Virginie Surdej who lensed her 2016 debut Wolf and Sheep — which saw Sadat win the Cicae Award out of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

Gist: The Orphanage is the second chapter of a planned pentalogy of films from Sadat based on instances from the diary of her best friend Anwar.…...