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Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir has made history at the 20th edition of Morocco’s Marrakech Film Festival as the first local director to win its top prize with her hybrid documentary The Mother Of All Lies.
Inspired by the bread riots in El Moudir’s home city of Casablanca in 1981, the work uses a replica of the neighborhood where it happened and figurines to explore the lasting trauma of the event.
The film world premiered at Cannes this year, where it shared the Golden Eye prize for the Best Documentary with Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters.
Morocco has since submitted the work as its candidate for Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
In other Marrakech awards, theJury Prize was shared by Moroccan director Kamal Lazraq’s kidnapping thriller Hounds and French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberius, revisiting the story of her actress mother Hiam Abbass displaced family.
In another first, all three winning films participated in the festival’s Atlas Workshops, nurturing projects and talent from the Arab world and Africa.
In other awards, Best Director went to French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy for her film Banel & Adama, which also world premiered in Cannes.
Asja Zara Lagumdzija won Best Actress for Bosnian drama Excursion by Una Gunjak and Doga Karakas won Best Actor for Turkish film Dormitory by Nehir Tuna.
This year’s jury was presided over by Jessica Chastain with other members spanning Franco-Iranian actor Zar Amir; French actor Camille Cottin; Australian actor and director Joel Edgerton; British director Joanna Hogg; US director Dee Rees; Egyptian-born Swedish director Tarek Saleh; Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård; and Franco-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani.
The festival’s celebratory 20th editions came together against the difficult backdrop of the earthquake in the nearby Atlas Mountains in September, the geopolitical tensions of the Israel-Hamas Conflict and the tail-end of the Hollywood actors’ strike. More than 21,000 people registered to attend the festival this year, entrance to which is free of charge, while another 8,000 schoolchildren and teenagers from the region participated in the screenings.
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