Festival in Focus: Marrakech Set For Biggest Ever Industry Strand As Atlas Workshops Welcomes New Projects By Mounia Akl, Scandar Copti & Amjad Al-Rasheed

The Marrakech Film Festival’s project and talent development program the Atlas Workshops is enjoying a banner year.

The annual meeting, focused on Moroccan, Arab and African feature projects and taking its name from the mountain range visible on Marrakech’s horizon, has been involved in a slew of films making waves on the 2025 festival circuit.

Among its 2024 attendees, Cherien Dabis’s All That’s Left Of You premiered at Sundance and is now Jordan’s Oscar entry; Palestinian Tarzan & Arab Nasser’s Once Upon A Time In Gaza won best director at Cannes Un Certain Regard, while Egyptian drama Aisha Can’t Fly Away also premiered in the section.

More recently, star-crossed romance It’s A Sad And Beautiful World won the Audience Award at the Venice Giornate degli Autori, and Apartheid era drama Laundry enjoyed a buzzy premiere in the Discovery section of Toronto.

The upcoming eighth edition, running November 30 to December 4 against the genteel backdrop of the Beldi Country Club on the outskirts of Marrakech, promises to be equally fruitful with its lineup featuring new projects by Suha Arraf, Scandar Copti, Mounia Akl, Amjad Al Rasheed, Asmae El Moudir,  Laïla Marrakchi and Rami Kodeih among others.

This year’s selection includes 12 projects in development, 10 films which are shooting or in post-production; five first Moroccan fiction features in development in the Atlas Close-Ups sidebar and one Moroccan feature nearing completion and seeking a festival premiere in the Atlas Film Showcase section

Cannes Palme d’Or winning Romanian director Cristian Mungiu is patron of this year’s edition, following in the footsteps of Jeff Nichols last year.

In sign of how independent cinema in the MENA region continues to go from strength to strength, Atlas Workshops head Hédi Zardi says he is impressed by the  ambition of this year’s projects

“They explore the notion of territory a lot, encompassing both tangible geographical and emotional territory as well historical territory, the past, memory,” he says.  “There’s a sense of journey, of crossing, both geographically and through the past and into the future. There’s something very epic about these projects,” he says.

“There’s a move away from minimalist or geographically limited stories. I can’t remember where I read that in one of the trades, that phase, ‘think local, act global’, but it’s exactly that.”

Zardi, who previously worked in international sales as co-founder and co-head of Paris-based Luxbox, says it is a balancing act building a lineup that gives space to more “singular: and “challenging” works with projects that will “excite the market”.

He points to Lebanese directorial duo Michel Zarazir and Gaby Zarazir’s Trip to Jerusalem, about a widow who takes on the French army and the church against the backdrop of Lebanon in World War Two, and Elisé Sawasawa’s documentary Goma Enough Is Enough about the fall of the provincial capital to M23 rebels in January 2025.

“Trip To Jerusalem has a very lively, dark comedic tone, and dares to do some quite interesting things, while Goma Enough Is Enough is a very powerful, documentary-style immersion into the reality of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both films have a strong personality,” says Zardi.

Titles at the production or post-production stage already sparking strong buyer interest include Laïla Marrakchi’s Las Más Dulce, her first feature film since 2013 breakout family drama Rock The Casbah, with the director working on shows like The Bureau and The Eddy; Asmae El Moudir’s documentary Don’t Let The Sun Go Up On Me, her second feature after her Cannes and Marrakech winning work The Mother of all Lies, and Lebanese director Rami Kodeih’s financial crisis-bank heist drama Wolves.

Zardi says that El Moudir’s new film about a young woman born with a rare genetic disorder which means she has to avoid exposure to the sun, is a “happy” discovery.

“We’re always afraid of being disappointed after a big success but when I see the clips she’s sent, I find the level extraordinary. I’m like ‘wow’.”

“She’s in the middle of the production because she still has some filming to do, but what she’s compiled to share with us formally is very polished; she’s pushing her artistic vision quite far, blending profound reflection with a formal approach that, at this stage, is truly superb.”

The Atlas Workshops are taking place this year within the framework of Marrakech’s biggest ever industry offering, following a restructuring of all its professional activities under the banner of Atlas Programs.

The existing strand of Atlas Station, focused on up-skilling 10 Moroccan professionals, has been expanded to include five Moroccan directors with shorts at the post-production stage, with the aim of helping them make the transition towards feature films.

The festival has also bolstered its focus on distribution by further expanding the Atlas Distribution strand, aimed at supporting the circulation of Moroccan, Arab, and African films to new audiences.

Since 2023, the strand had meted out the Atlas Distribution Awards recognizing distributors who are committed to supporting works from the MENA and wider African regions.

The strand will be further enhanced by the Atlas Distribution Meetings, a new four-day event that bringing 60 distribution professionals from the Arab world, Africa, and Europe in Marrakech. Participating distributors will discover international films presented as part of the festival and Arab and African films in post-production that are participating in the Atlas Workshops.