Marrakech festival spotlights tensions animating Morocco's movie industry
Entertainment
Such tensions have become paramount for the global film industry
MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) — After the movie “Cabo Negro” screened at the Marrakech International Film Festival this week, organizers anticipating backlash whisked its crew away and canceled screenwriter-director Abdellah Taia’s scheduled post-film Q&A.
The film — selected as one of the festival’s 70 features and approved by authorities to be shot in Morocco — is a queer tale of two young men spending a summer on a beach in the north of the country.
“I am Moroccan. I am gay. And I always have wanted to put the reality of Moroccan gays in cinema,” Taia said, introducing the film at a screening last week. “The love that I never got growing up, I invented it; I created it; and I put it in ‘Cabo Negro’ to give it to today’s Moroccan youth.”
Sixteen years after Taia came out in Moroccan media and 11 years after he released his first film with gay protagonists, the subject of “Cabo Negro” isn’t new. Nor was his statement out of step with the actors and directors who similarly laud what movies are capable of at the festival.
Yet the chain of events that followed laid bare some of the tensions animating Morocco’s film industry.
When the Marrakech festival rolls out its red carpet each year, movie stars in attendance find sunny winter weather, luxurious resorts and a venue to laud cinema and its power to change minds. This year’s event wrapped up on Saturday and featured stars such as actor Sean Penn and director Luca Guadagnino. But the image that the festival projects about freedoms in Morocco’s film industry often clashes with censorship and economic realities facing filmmakers.
Such tensions have become paramount for the global film industry as new festivals crop up in countries like Saudi Arabia and China, the world’s second largest entertainment industry.
In Morocco, foreign films with sex scenes can screen at the Marrakech Film Festival without issue, yet normally segments that contain kissing in films such as “Titanic” or “Spiderman” are censored on Moroccan television. Audiences can applaud a film about Iran’s repression of nationwide protests in 2022. But Moroccan journalists and activists critical of the government continue to be sentenced to prison time, including as recently as last month. And Moroccan films like “Cabo Negro” may be shown, but homosexuality remains outlawed under Morocco’s penal code.
