Rabat- The city of Tetouan in northern Morocco is set to host the 28th edition of the Mediterranean Cinema Festival from March 3-10, when 12 movies will compete for three awards.
The festival brings together filmmakers, actors, producers, and film enthusiasts from around the Mediterranean region to celebrate the art of cinema and showcase different work.
This year’s edition of the festival is featuring a diverse selection of films from different countries around the Mediterranean, including Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, Spain, and France. The films cover two categories, documentaries, and fiction films.
The cinematic celebration had 350 applications, of which eight fiction films and four documentaries were selected to compete in front of five members of a judging panel led by the Turkish Director Zeki Demirkubuz.
One of the highlights of this year’s festival is the tribute to Moroccan writer, scenarist, and cinema critic, Mustapha Mesnaoui, who passed away in 2015.
The festival has been contributing to the city’s sustainable development as well as other sectors, including tourism and cinema, President of the Foundation of the International Festival of Mediterranean Cinema Ahmed Housni told Morocco World News (MWN).
The film festival serves an educational purpose by hosting screenings, debates, roundtables, and workshops, for youth and children, Housni added.
In addition, Housni also listed the challenges facing the festival, including funding issues.
“One of the main issues facing the festival is the funding,” he stressed, emphasizing that public institutions distributed locally, regionally, and nationally provide the festival with the major part of its funding.
The foundation’s president noted that unfortunately there is a considerable lack of funding from the private sector, compared to that of public institutions.
In addition to cinema, coexistence and promoting the city’s tourism sector is also part of the festival’s mission amid instability and conflicts in the region.
Speaking about the festival, Housni stressed that the criteria for choosing the competing movies take six months to allow potential participants to register on the festival’s platform.
The selection procedure takes into account several criteria, including the quality of the movies as well as suggestions from experts and cineasts. The executive bureau of the festival then selects the finalists who compete under different categories.
The list of films to compete in this year’s edition, includes “Poissons Rouges” by Abdesalam Kelai from Morocco, “Settembre” by Giulia Louise Steigerwalt from Italy, and “Le Barrage, AL–Sadd” by Ali Cherri from, France, Germany, Lebanon.
