Morocco | Marrakech Film Festival opens with screening of The Order

(Marrakech) One of the largest film festivals in the Middle East and North Africa opened Friday in Morocco, attracting actors and directors from around the world to present 70 feature films from 32 countries.

The Marrakech International Film Festival, which is in its 21st^e year, will present Oscar nominees and screen films to the public. But unlike the major festivals in Venice, Cannes or Toronto, it focuses on emerging directors and films from the Middle East and Africa.

The list of actors and directors who will be part of the discussions and tributes this year includes Sean Penn, Alfonso Cuarón and David Cronenberg.

Rémi Bonhomme, the artistic director of the festival, believes that what makes the festival unique is its ability to attract talent like the biggest festivals in the world, while highlighting emerging directors from Morocco, the Middle East and Africa.

“We pay a lot of attention to countries that are underrepresented in cinema,” he said. We support filmmakers who have their own voice, who develop a story that is set in a specific context, whether it is Iran, Morocco or the United States. »

“But they don’t need to be the voice of their country. They need to have the freedom to express their own personal vision,” he added.

Among the themes that interest Mr. Bonhomme in this year’s films is family. The filmmakers, including the director of Wild fig tree seeds (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), Mohammad Rasoulof, “explore the social and political impact at the level of a family,” he explained.

The festival opens Friday with The Ordera thriller starring Jude Law that chronicles an FBI manhunt for the leader of a white supremacist group.

The jury competition includes 14 first or second films. The nine-person jury includes actors Jacob Elordi and Andrew Garfield as well as Ali Abbasi, the Iranian-Danish director of The Apprentice (The Apprentice). The jury will be chaired by Luca Guadagnino, Italian-Algerian director of Queer.

Films in competition include The sea in the distance (Across the Sea) by Saïd Hamich, on the immigration of a young Moroccan to Marseille, and Under the Volcano by Damian Kocur, a Polish Oscar contender for best international film.

The festival, founded by the King of Morocco Mohammed VI and chaired by his brother Prince Moulay Rachid, plays a major role in the presentation and promotion of Moroccan films and directors.

It has rarely avoided the diversity of subjects and this year will screen Moroccan films on immigration, homosexuality, bar artists and Moroccan communist Jews.