The Khouribga International African Film Festival (FICAK) is one of Morocco's and Africa's oldest and most prestigious cinema events, dedicated to promoting African filmmaking. [1] (https://www.e-taqafa.ma/dossier/le-festival-international-du-cin%C3%A9ma-africain-de-khouribga)History and SignificanceFounding: Created in 1977 by the local cinema club and led by Noureddine Saïl through the National Federation of Cinema Clubs in Morocco.
Abderrahmane El Ouadi – a poet, writer, and playwright from Morocco; he holds a doctorate in Arabic language.
El Ouadi:have you served Moroccan cinema, or have you built an institution for it that is more powerful than the cinema itself?
- Saïl: That question assumes that an institution is the antithesis of creativity. Cinema isn't created through good intentions alone; it requires funding, theaters, regulations, production infrastructure, archives, training, and festivals.
- El Ouadi: But we *have* the institutions... so, do we actually have a cinema?
- Saïl: We have achieved a process of accumulation. And accumulation is more important than waiting for a miracle.
-El Ouadi: That is the language of an institutional man, not the critic who once wanted to change the world through cinema.
- Saïl: A critic who doesn't test their ideas against reality remains nothing more than an angry poet facing a screen.
-El Ouadi: And perhaps, when an institutional man stays within the system for too long, he transforms into a guardian of the very reality he once sought to change.
- Saïl: That’s possible, but there is a difference between guarding mediocrity and trying to prevent the house from collapsing.
- El Ouadi:
Let’s talk about that house. Moroccan cinema is producing more films than it used to, participating in more festivals, and receiving more support; yet, the average Moroccan remains unfamiliar with many of their country's films. Where, then, is the success?
- Saïl: Production is a primary condition, but not the final one. You can produce fifty films, but if theaters collapse, distribution is weak, and the film becomes disconnected from its audience, you are left with only half an industry.
- El Ouadi: So, we don't have a film industry?
- Saïl: We possess the elements of an industry, but it is not yet complete.
-El Ouadi: Why not simply say that Moroccan cinema has continued to rely more on the state than on the audience?
- Saïl: Because in countries like Morocco, the state is expected to help give birth to a national cinema. The market alone can turn cinema into a commodity chasing the quickest laugh and the fastest revenue.
- El Ouadi: But the subsidy system, too, has created filmmakers who think about the funding committee before they think about the audience.
-Saïl: That is indeed one of the ailments of the subsidy system.
- El Ouadi: An admission, at last.
- Saïl: I do not hold the institutions I worked for as sacrosanct.
- El Ouadi: Yet you were part of the cinematic establishment for years—director of the Cinema Center, a key figure in the Marrakech Festival, head of the African Film Festival foundation in Khouribga... Hasn't Nour-Eddine Sail himself become an institution?
- Saïl: If you mean that I held many responsibilities, then yes. But if you mean that Moroccan cinema belonged to me, that is an unacceptable claim.
- El Ouadi: Cultural authority is most dangerous when it refuses to acknowledge itself as authority.
- Saïl: And I never said it wasn't authority. Every decision regarding funding, programming, and selection is an exercise of authority. The question is: how do you use it?
-El Ouadi: And who monitors the person wielding that authority?
- Saïl: Critics, the press, filmmakers, elected bodies, and public opinion.
- El Ouadi: You say that as if the Moroccan film scene were renowned for its independence from personal connections, networks, and cronyism.
- Saïl : No cultural sphere is entirely free of such connections. The mistake lies in reducing everything to them.
- El Ouadi: Let’s turn to Khouribga. A festival born of the spirit of film clubs, debate, and collective viewing—then transformed into an institution. Didn't that institutionalization kill off some of the original spirit?
- Saïl: Had it remained merely an exercise in nostalgia for the seventies, it would have died out long ago. To survive, a festival must evolve.
- El Ouadi: Or must it transform from a festival for cinephiles into one governed by protocol?
- Saïl: The Khouribga festival was never built around the red carpet. Its essence has always been African cinema and the discourse surrounding it.
- El Ouadi: But why Khouribga, specifically? A phosphate city that generates wealth, yet its festival has to scramble for funding with every edition?
- Saïl: That is where the paradox lies—beautiful and harsh at once: that a major window onto African cinema exists in a working-class mining town, rather than in a cultural capital teeming with salons.
- El Ouadi: Beautiful for an intellectual arriving from Rabat or Casablanca, perhaps. But what has Khouribga actually gained from the festival after all these decades?
-Saïl: It has gained a cinematic legacy that even larger cities do not possess.
- El Ouadi: Memory isn't enough. Where is the film institute? Where is the infrastructure? Where is the local film industry? Where are the dozens of young people from Khouribga who should have become directors, technicians, and producers?
- Saïl: Now you are holding the festival accountable for the responsibilities of the state, the city, the university, and vocational training sectors all at once.
- El Ouadi: I am asking about the festival's impact. A festival spanning decades shouldn't just be a single luminous week followed by eleven months of darkness.
- Saïl: I agree with that last point. A true festival ought to evolve into a continuous cultural endeavor.
- El Ouadi: Yet it hasn't done enough in that regard.
- Saïl: Perhaps.
- El Ouadi: Another "perhaps"?
- Saïl: Do you want an interrogation or a dialogue?
- El Ouadi: But African cinema itself finds it difficult to reach the African audience. Our films travel to Europe more than they travel between Rabat, Dakar, Bamako and Niamey.
- Saïl: These are the biggest defeats of African cinema: production improved, but joint African distribution remained weak.
El Ouadi: So festivals have become islands: we meet, applaud, award prizes, and then each film returns to its isolation.
- Saïl: When the festival turns into just a celebration, yes, it becomes an island.
- El OuadiAl-Wadi: Has the Khouribga Festival sometimes turned into this?
-Saïl: It certainly happened at some moments. No institution defeats itself in every cycle.
- AEl Ouadi: This is the answer I was waiting for.
- Saïl: Because you are looking for recognition of failure.
El Ouadi: No, I am looking for our right to question the legend.
- Saïl: The worst thing that can happen to Nour al-Din al-Sayel after his death is that he turns into a statue that cannot be approached.
-El Ouadi: If you returned to Khouribga today and sat in front of the city’s youth, what would you say to them?
- Noureddine Saïl: I would tell them: Do not wait for the festival to deliver cinema to you; take cinema from it yourselves. Demand permanent workshops, an archive, training programs, screening venues, an image laboratory, and for the
city to be a partner rather than merely a backdrop.
- El OuadiAEl Ouadi: And would you allow them to say that Nour-Eddine Al-Sayel’s generation didn’t do enough?
- Saïl: They ought to say that; for a generation that does not accuse its forebears of falling short will never surpass them.
- El Ouadi: Then give me one final statement—stripped of institutional jargon or diplomacy: What is the problem with Moroccan cinema?
- Saïl: It has learned how to produce a film, but has not yet learned how to make society feel a need for it.
- El Ouadi: And the problem with the Khouribga Festival?
- Saïl-: Its history has grown too significant to allow it to remain merely a festival.
- El Ouadi: What, then, is required of it?
- Saïl: To evolve into an African institution for the moving image that operates year-round, rather than just a single week spent celebrating its own past.
- El Ouadi: And if it fails to do so?
- Saïl: Its past will become its finest feature.
- El Ouadi: That is the most alarming thing you’ve said.
- Saïl: No—the most alarming thing would be for that statement to prove true.
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