"Aisha" Represents Morocco in Krakow
The Moroccan short film "Aicha" directed by Sanaa El Alaoui ( سناء العلاوي in Arabic ) and produced by Piotr Kaczorowski's
Native Line company will have it's world premiere at the Krakow Film Festival in Poland on 27th of May 2025 . This is the first time a Moroccan film has been featured at this prestigious film event, which is considered one of the festivals qualifying for Oscars.
According to information obtained by Hespress, this 25-minute film was independently produced in Morocco, with a budget of approximately $60,000. It addresses thorny social issues through a dramatic plot that combines documentation and fiction, with the bold use of diverse cinematic techniques, from live filming (96 percent) to animation (4 percent), to Super 8 analog camera shots and documentary elements.
"Aicha" tells the story of a 17-year-old teenage girl (starring Manal Bennani) who struggles with a tepid relationship with her mother (starring Hind Dafer) before her life takes a tragic turn. The film culminates in the mother's journey as she joins a Gnaoui Sufi ritual in search of salvation and to restore the lost bond with her daughter, an experience that intersects the boundaries of reality and the supernatural.
The film represents an attempt to reframe cinema from a more intimate and courageous perspective. It was inspired in part by the painful story of the late Amina Filali, who committed suicide in 2012 after being forced to marry her rapist, an incident that shocked Moroccan public opinion and later contributed to the amendment of Article 475 of the Penal Code.
The film's director explained that the work is not told in a linear fashion, not out of a search for abstract experimentation, but rather because form serves content, believing that "psychological trauma disrupts our perception of time and reshapes our awareness of ourselves."
The person responsible for translating Sanaa's artistic vision to the language of camera - including the 2:30 min long take in the beginning of the film - is a graduate of Łódź Film School, cinematographer Oskar Jan Król.
At Krakow film festival, the director will introduce her short film Aicha along with techicians and artists such as Tomek Popakul, a polish animation artist; Allal El Alaoui - production manager; and first AD - Hicham Goulal.
The director also chose to combine fiction and documentary, emphasizing that she does not believe in a clear separation between the two, noting that the Sufi rituals depicted in the film were depicted realistically, with the real participation of its practitioners, and without acting. She continued that one of the most prominent visual moments in the film is a symbolic scene on a beach in which a veiled woman appears exchanging silent glances with the heroine, in an artistic projection that intersects with a famous scene from Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” where the meanings of death, faith, and the search for the self are revealed. This scene embodies the heroine’s internal conflict and highlights the tensions between popular religion and Sufism as a mirror of the contradictions of Moroccan society.
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