Moroccan Film Returns to Shanghai Main Competition
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Yassine El Idrissi's drama "Halima" entered the Golden Goblet Awards Main Competition at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, where it celebrated its world premiere ahead of a press conference.
- The selection marks Morocco's return to SIFF's premier category after a 27-year gap; the last Moroccan film to compete at that level was Saad Chraibi's "Women … and Women" at the festival's 4th edition in 1999.
- The film follows an elderly woman living quietly by the sea whose routine is upended by a phone call compelling her to confront a past involvement in the illegal cannabis trade, with the narrative shifting between the present and memories from five years earlier.
- El Idrissi, who also wrote and produced the film, traced it to his years as a photojournalist traveling across Morocco and built the texture through natural lighting and ambient sound, including a guitar piece drawn from a well-known Moroccan song about poverty in the Rif Mountains.
- Lead actor Khadija, a Moroccan performer with an extensive career in smaller roles, had never previously headlined a feature; El Idrissi traveled to her city with co-lead Rabii El Fakih, rented a house nearby, and held three days of auditions before casting her.
- El Idrissi said Morocco produces around 26 films per year — a figure he considers well short of its potential given the country's position as a cultural bridge between Africa and Europe.
- This year's Golden Goblet competition features 49 films from 34 countries and regions, with all entries in both the main competition and documentary categories being world premieres for the first time.
Why it matters: Morocco's return to SIFF's top category after 27 years gives "Halima" a rare platform for Moroccan cinema, which El Idrissi says produces only 26 films annually. The selection spotlights a self-written, self-produced film about the cannabis trade — a subject co-lead Rabii El Fakih called uncommon in Moroccan storytelling — at a festival where every main-competition entry is a world premiere for the first time.
