The Marrakech International Film Festival returns to Morocco’s resort this month, and organizers hope to catch dazzled enthusiasts after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
British actress Tilda Swinton will attend, with Italian director Paolo Sorrentino leading the jury.
The festival, which runs Nov. 11-19, features emerging filmmakers from around the world who will “shape the cinema of tomorrow,” according to Prince Moulay Rachid, who chairs the festival’s foundation.
Sorrentino, whose film “The Great Beauty” won a foreign-language Oscar in 2014, joins French actor Tahar Rahim, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki and German-American actress Diane Kruger.
Fourteen feature films from around the world, six by women, will compete for the festival’s first prize, the Gold Star.
Artistic director Rémi Bonhomme told AFP that the festival “brings together other cinematographic universes, through 76 films (representing) 33 countries from all continents. “
The opening film is “Pinocchio,” a remake of Carlo Collodi’s animated tale through Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.
Tributes will also be paid to American director James Gray and Swinton, who headed the festival’s jury in 2018 and 2019, as Moroccan director Farida Benlyazid and Bollywood star Ranveer Singh.
Known for its conversational-looking events, the festival will give audiences a chance to see two-time Oscar winner Iranian director Asghar Farhadi.
American freelance director Jim Jarmusch is also on the show, occasionally taking positions at a number of locations in the city with their famous red buildings.
Marrakech’s iconic Jamaa El-Fna Square will host open-air screenings of James Gray’s sci-fi epic “Dune” and “Ad Astra. “
The city’s prominent Yves Saint Laurent Museum will also house the “11th Continent” collection of recently restored archival films, “Muna moto” (1975) by Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa or “Beirut the Encounter” (1981) by Lebanon’s Borhane. Alaouié.
Other screenings will come with films that have already recently debuted at most sensible festivals, adding “No Bears” by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been detained in Iran since July. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.
The legal drama and Silver Lion of Venice “Saint Omer”, by French director Alice Diop, will be screened.
On the sidelines of the festivities, organizers will host the Atlas Workshops, an award-winning program for young filmmakers from Africa and the Middle East in progression and post-production.
A previous winner, Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy, won a Los Angeles Semaine de los Angeles Grand Prix Critique at Cannes in July for his scathing “Feathers. “