Fez — “Fidélité(s) ou la Panenka de Hakimi” (Loyalty(s) or Hakimi’s Panenka), a stage work by Mona El Yafi and Ali Esmili, is currently touring Morocco as part of the French Institute of Morocco’s “J-Lioum, ici et maintenant” program, bringing a timely story about belonging and family tension to audiences across several cities.
The production is presented by “Collectif Des Trois Mulets” and runs in Morocco from April 8 to April 24.
At the center of the play is Lila, a 16-year-old footballer whose future opens in two directions at once. Born and raised in France, she is being considered by the French national team, but Morocco, the country of her parents, pulls at her in a different way. The choice is framed as much more than a sporting decision. It is portrayed as a family reckoning, exposing silence, memory, loyalty, and the pressure of inherited identity.
The play unfolds inside a living room under renovation, a setting that mirrors identities still being built and negotiated. Through that intimate space, three generations confront their own attachments and contradictions.
The work draws part of its symbolic force from the figure of Achraf Hakimi, whose career has come to embody questions of national belonging for many Moroccans at home and abroad.
Football, family, and plural identities
What gives the production its current relevance is the way it uses football, and specifically women’s football, as an entry point into broader conversations about migration, projection, and emotional allegiance.
Public descriptions of the play stress that it is not simply about team selection, but about the complexity of being shaped by more than one country, more than one story, and more than one expectation.
The Morocco tour includes stops in Oujda, Meknes, Fez, Kenitra, Casablanca, El Jadida, Marrakech, and Agadir, according to the French Institute of Morocco.
The institute’s main event page lists the national tour between April 8 and April 24, while local listings confirm performances in Meknes on April 10, Fez on April 11, Casablanca on April 16 at Théâtre 121, El Jadida on April 18, Marrakech on April 22, and Agadir on April 24.
The timing also matters. Morocco’s cultural scene has increasingly embraced works that speak to diaspora identity, dual belonging, and intergenerational memory, especially through stories that feel rooted in contemporary life rather than abstract debate.
By placing those questions inside a family drama shaped by football, “Fidélité(s) ou la Panenka de Hakimi” turns a familiar national passion into a lens for something more personal and more difficult.
That is what makes the play resonate beyond the stage.
