Marrakech reconnects with its International Film Festival
Theoretically, it is a beautiful autumn season that awaits Marrakech. The calendar of events, particularly the cultural ones, seems rather busy and suggests an intense season for the “Ocher City”, whose inhabitants, tourists, and actors are going to reconnect with animation that had been interrupted during the two years of the health crisis. One of the most expected events is the Marrakech International Film Festival (FIFM) scheduled to take place from November 11 to November 19, 2022. The Festival will consist of nine days of films and of a competition between fourteen first and second international feature films, dedicated to discovering filmmakers around the world. And this year, the filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino is presiding over the jury for the nineteenth edition of the FIFM. Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino is today one of the most famous representatives of Italian cinema. His work is rich with a dozen films and series. The author who explores contemporary themes with reflections on power, politics, religion… has been rewarded in the biggest film festivals and events around the world and knows the Marrakech festival well for having participated with Martin Scorsese. “The Marrakech festival is for me the place where the dream of watching many Scorsese films and spending entire days talking about cinema with him and other talented colleagues came true. Coming back this year as president of the jury is an honor”, says Sorrentino. “I want to believe that movie theaters will fill up again and I want to witness this revival from such a symbolic place”. Sorrentino chairs a jury made up of several artists and directors who will award the Gold Star to one of the fourteen films in competition for this nineteenth edition of the FIFM.
As a reminder, the eighteenth edition of the festival – held in December 2019 – ended with the awarding of the Gold Star to the Colombian film “Valley of souls” by Nicolás Rincòn Gille, delivered by the president of the jury, the Scottish actress Tilda Swinton. In 2019, the festival had gathered some 105,000 spectators and screened 98 films. In 2020 and 2021, due to the Covid, the festival was canceled, and the Foundation that is the initiator of the festival had organized the third and fourth digital editions of “Les Ateliers de l’Atlas”, the support program for Arab and African professionals, created in 2018. For its nineteenth edition, will the festival regain its pre-Covid momentum?
Badra BERRISSOULE
