The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from May 14 to 25, will see the screening of “La Mer au loin”, second feature film by Moroccan director Saïd Hamich Benlarbi, in a special screening at the Critics’ Week, section parallel which celebrates the first and second films.
After collaborations with various filmmakers, including Philippe Faucon and Nabil Ayouch, Saïd Hamich Benlarbi turned to directing with a first feature film in 2018, “Retour à Bollène”, nominated for the Louis-Delluc Prize for First Film. Two years later, his short film “Le Départ” was nominated for the 2020 Césars.
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Co-produced by the Moroccan company Mont Fleuri Production with Barney Production (France) and Tarantula (Belgium), “La Mer au loin” tells the story of Nour, played by Ayoub Gretaa, a 27-year-old young man who emigrates illegally to Marseille, where he lives with his small-time trafficking friends, leading a marginal and festive existence. But his meeting with Serge, a charismatic and unpredictable police officer, and his wife Noémie, will turn his life upside down.
The film’s cast also includes French actors Grégoire Colin (“The Dream Life of Angels,” by Érick Zonca, 1998) and Ana Mouglalis, who starred in “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky,” by Jan Kounen (2009). ), “La Jalousie”, by Philippe Garrel (2013), and more recently in the series “Baron noir”, by Amélie Dorendeu (2016-2020).
Since 1962, the date of its creation by the French Union of Cinema Critics, the Semaine de la Critique, a parallel section of the Cannes Festival, has been dedicated to the discovery of young talents in cinematographic creation, by honoring their first and second feature films.
It is in this section that “Jacques Audiard, Alejandro González Iñarritu, Ken Loach, François Ozon, Wong Kar Wai or more recently César Augusto Acevedo, Julia Ducournau, David R. Mitchell, Santiago Miter, Jeff Nichols or Rebecca Zlotowski have been revealed“, we explain on the official website of Critics’ Week, which is celebrating its 63rd edition this year.
