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Laila Abbas’s debut feature Thank You for Banking With Us! swept top honors at the 9th Critics Awards for Arab Films, held May 17 during the Cannes Film Festival. The Palestinian director received Best Film and Best Director for her drama, which exposes gendered inheritance rules under Islamic Sharia law as two sisters race against time to claim their father’s estate.

Morocco’s Everybody Loves Touda earned Best Screenplay for Nabil Ayouch and Maryam Touzani, while lead actress Nisrin Erradi won Best Actress for her portrayal of a village poet determined to chase her dreams despite familial obligations. The film premiered last year in Cannes’s Premiere section and drew praise for its compassionate telling of a woman’s quest in rural Morocco.

Adam Bessa took Best Actor for Ghost Trail, a French-Tunisian thriller in which his character tracks Syrian regime figures across Europe and confronts his own former captor.

Laila Abbas’s Thank You For Banking With Us has scooped best film at the ninth Critics Awards for Arab Films, which will celebrate its winners in Cannes today (May 17).

The Palestinian drama, which debuted at the BFI London Film Festival, also picked up best director for debut feature filmmaker Abbas. The story follows two sisters, played by Clara Khoury and Yasmine Al Massri, who race against time to secure their father’s inheritance.

Also picking up two awards was Nabil Ayouch’s Moroccan film Everybody Loves Touda, which bowed in the Cannes Premiere section of last year’s festival.

Continuing its tradition of celebrating excellence in Arab cinema, the Arab Cinema Center (Acc) has announced the nominees for the ninth edition of its annual Critics Awards for Arab Films.

Leading the pack with five nominations each this year are four films: Thank You For Banking With US; Everybody Loves Touda; Ghost Trail and Seeking Haven For Mr. Rambo. Following close behind them, with four nominations, is: AÏCHA.

Several other films also had multiple nominations including: The Village Next To Paradise; To A Land Unknown; Voy! Voy! Voy! and Norah.

This year’s winners will be revealed during a ceremony held on May 17th as part of the Cannes Film Festival. The event is organized in collaboration with Mad Solutions and the International Emerging Film Talent Association (Iefta), and attendance is by invitation only.

The Critics Awards for Arab Films have become a prestigious and anticipated highlight of the festival calendar.

Thank You For Banking With Us, Everybody Loves Touda, Ghost Trail and Seeking Haven For Mr. Rambo lead the nominations for the 9th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which will take place during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

All four features have received five nominations apiece for the awards, which spotlight Arab films that premiered outside the Arab world in 2024.

Mehdi Barsaoui’s Aïcha follows closely behind with four nods. Several other films also had multiple nominations including: The Village Next To Paradise, To A Land Unknown, Voy! Voy! Voy! and Norah.

Some 281 jury members from 75 countries will vote on the nominees,...

The Arab Cinema Center (Acc) has announced the nominations for the 9th Critics Awards for Arab Films, the ceremony which will take place on the fringes of the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Four films are in the lead, making it into five categories each: Laila Abbas’ Thank You For Banking With Us (Palestine), Nabil Ayouch’s Everybody Loves Touda (Morocco); Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail (Tunisia) and Khaled Mansour’s Seeking Haven For Mr. Rambo (Egypt)

Mehdi Barsaoui’s Aïcha (Tunisia) follows with four nominations. Other films in the running include Mo Harawe’s The Village Next To Paradise (Somalia) Mahdi Fleifel’s To A Land Unknown (Palestine); Omar Hilal’s Voy! Voy! Voy! (Egypt) and Tawfik Alzaidi’s Norah (Saudi Arabia)

This year’s winners will be revealed during a ceremony on May 17 in Cannes. The event is organized by the Acc in collaboration with Mad Solutions and...

The eighth edition of Screen International’s talent-spotting initiative Arab Stars of Tomorrow will once again launch at this year’s Red Sea International Film Festival (December 5-13).

2024’s selection of five rising talents from across the Mena region will be unveiled on Saturday, December 7 in Screen’s second Red Sea print daily and on Screendaily.com.

For the second time, the initiative has been held in conjunction with Red Sea and Film AlUla, which is hosting a photoshoot for the five selected talents, including at the first Unesco world heritage site in Saudi Arabia, the Hegra Archaealogical Site (Al Hjr).

On Saturday,...

After breaking ground with his 2021 movie “Casablanca Beats,” which marked the first Moroccan feature to vie for a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, filmmaker Nabil Ayouch (“Much Loved”) is achieving a new milestone with his latest movie, “Everybody Loves Touda,” which premiered at Cannes Premiere and is now eligible in all categories at the Oscars. It’s the first Moroccan film to do so.

“Everybody Loves Touda,” penned by Ayouch and his wife, the actor-turned-filmmaker Maryam Touzani (“The Blue Caftan”), tells the story a young poetess and singer known as a Shaeirat (Nisrin Erradi), who raises her deaf-mute son in a small Moroccan village. Hoping to give her son a better future and more opportunities in life, she moves with him to Casablanca where she faces setbacks. Erradi, who previously starred in Touzani’s feature debut, “Adam,” prepared for the part in “Everybody Loves Touda” for a...

The Marrakech Film Festival unveiled its 2024 lineup on Thursday and set that Luca Guadagnino would replace Thomas Vinterberg as its jury president. The other jury members will be Andrew Garfield, Jacob Elordi, Virginie Efira, and Ali Abbasi. Vinterberg “had to excuse himself for family reasons,” festival organizers said.

The Marrakech fest on Thursday also unveiled the lineup for its competition, 11th Continent, and Moroccan Panorama sections, as well as gala and special screenings. In the competition, 14 films will compete for the Étoile d’Or, or Golden Star.

The 21st edition of the fest in Morocco will also honor Sean Penn, David Cronenberg and, posthumously, pay homage to Moroccan star Naïma Elmcherqui. The Marrakech fest takes place Nov. 29-Dec. 7.

Check out the full lineup for the 2024 edition below.

Competition

Across The Sea (LA Mer Au Loin)

by Saïd Hamich Benlarbi / France, Morocco, Belgium

with Ayoub Gretaa, Anna Mouglalis, Grégoire Colin, Omar Boulakirba,...

Morocco has selected Nabil Ayouch’s drama Everybody Loves Touda as its submission to the Best International Feature Film category of the 97th Academy Awards.

The feature sees Ayouch explore the country’s tradition of Sheikhat, a type of sung poetry performed by female performers which has its roots in 19th century rural communities. Once revered, these performers saw their status undermined amid the rural exodus of the 1970s, which saw them moving into bars and cabaret clubs.

Nisrin Erradi plays a young woman who with aspirations of reviving the once hallowed status of Sheikhat, but who finds herself instead performing in provincial bars under the gaze of lustful men.

Everybody Loves Touda was selected as Morocco’s submission by commission overseen by the Moroccan Cinema Centre.

It consisted of producer Souad Lamriki; producer-directors Layla Triqui, Asmae El Moudir, Driss Mrini and Driss Roukhe as well as Zine El Abidine Charafeddine,...

The very title of “Everybody Loves Touda” poses a kind of challenge to viewers. If everybody loves Touda, dare you not? Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s forthright musical drama certainly doesn’t permit much room for dissent. From first gilded frame to last, the film is besotted with its eponymous heroine, a fiery small-town singer aspiring to the status of ‘Sheikhat’ — a revered class of diva versed in the poetic traditions of historical Aita music. With scene after scene conceived to emphasize Touda’s strength of character and depth of talent, it’s just as well star Nisrin Erradi is sufficiently magnetic not to buckle under the weight of the film’s devotion to her.

As a dramatic construction, however, Touda is more fabulous than she is intrinsically fascinating, characterized predominantly by determined ambition and glittering, show-must-go-on resolve. Ayouch’s script, written in collaboration with his wife and fellow filmmaker...

French-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch is in Cannes for the third time with “Everybody Loves Touda,” launching out of competition.

The film tells the story of a young poet and singer steeped in an ancient Moroccan form of folk song called aita, but forced to perform trashy pop songs in bars filled with abusive men.

Below, Ayouch speaks with Variety about what “Touda” says about Morocco today.

Morocco’s Shaeirat poetesses and singers have already appeared in several of your films. That said, how did this project originate?

As you say, I’ve met several of these women during the shoots of my previous films and they were haunting me somehow. In talking to them about their lives, they told me how difficult it was for them to be so strong, so powerful, on stage, while at the same time being forced to live in a world where they feel so...

Nabil Ayouch, a leading Moroccan filmmaker whose latest movie as a producer “The Blue Caftan” became the first Moroccan film to ever make it to the Oscars shortlist, is wrapping up his next directorial effort, “Everybody Loves Touda.”

Now in post-production, “Everybody Loves Touda” follows the journey of a strong-willed woman, along the lines of some of Ayouch’s best known films, such as “Much Loved” and “Razzia,” which played at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and Toronto, respectively. The movie will mark Ayouch’s directorial follow up to “Casablanca Beats,” which competed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021 and marked the first Moroccan feature to vie for a Palme d’Or.

“Everybody Loves Touda” tells the story a young poetess and singer known as a Shaeirat, who raises her deaf-mute son in a small Moroccan village. Hoping to give her son a better future and more opportunities in life, she moves...

The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors from the region.

Screen International has unveiled the five emerging Middle East and North Africa talents in the fields of acting and directing selected for the seventh edition of Arab Stars Of Tomorrow.

This year’s line-up comprises Adwa Bader, the actress and poet from Saudi Arabia; Jordan’s Cynthia Madanat Sharaiha, director; Egyptian writer and director Morad Mostafa; Palestinian actor Muhammad Abed El Rahman; and fellow Jordanian actress Noor Taher.

The initiative celebrates Arab talent and highlights the hottest up-and-coming actors, writers and directors who...

This year’s selection of five rising talents will be unveiled on Friday, December 1

The seventh edition of Screen International’s talent-spotting initiative Arab Stars of Tomorrow will once again launch at this year’s Red Sea International Film Festival (November 30-December 9).

This year’s selection of five rising talents will be unveiled on Friday, December 1 in Screen’s second Red Sea print daily and on Screendaily.com.

On Saturday, December 2 the stars will take part in a panel discussion at 2pm Ast at the festival hosted by Screen, following a breakfast reception

Arab Stars of Tomorrow celebrates Arab talent...

Our sixth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow spotlights rising Middle Eastern and North African talents.

In our sixth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow, Screen International spotlights five emerging Middle Eastern and North African talents in the fields of acting and directing.

This year’s selection comprises Saudi writer/director Mohamed Al Salman, Moroccan writer/director Sofia Alaoui, Lebanese writer/director Dania Bdeir, Tunisian actor Adam Bessa and Lebanese actor Ziad Jallad.

The showcase has been organised in cooperation with the Red Sea International Film Festival for the first time. At a launch panel held at the festival on...

Talent-spotting initiative celebrates Arab talent who are primed to make their mark in the international industry.

The sixth edition of Screen International’s talent-spotting initiative Arab Stars of Tomorrow will launch at this year’s Red Sea International Film Festival (December 1-10) for the first time.

The 2022 Arab Stars of Tomorrow will be unveiled on ScreenDaily on Sunday December 4, accompanied by a panel discussion at 12pm Ast (9am GMT) at the Red Sea film festival hosted by Screen’s international news editor Michael Rosser and followed by a reception. The line-up will also be featured in an upcoming print edition of Screen.

In our fifth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow, Screen International puts the spotlight on six emerging Middle Eastern and North African talents.

In our fifth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow, Screen International puts the spotlight on six emerging Middle Eastern and North African talents in the fields of acting and directing.

This year’s selection features Egyptian actress Bassant Ahmed, Kuwaiti filmmaker Maysaa Almumin, Emirati actor Khalifa Al-Jassem, Tunisian actress Zbeida Belhajamor, Saudi director Sara Mesfer and Sudanese actor Mustafa Shehata.

For the third year running, the edition has been organised in cooperation with the Cairo International Film Festival.

Adam Strand Releasing Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Maryam Touzani Writer: Maryam Touzani in association with Nabil Ayouch Cast: Lubna Azabal, Nisrin Erradi, Douae Belkhaouda, Aziz Hattab, Hasnaa Tamtaoui Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 2/11/21 Opens: March 5, 2021 You don’t want to know what happens in […]

The post Adam Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

"With me, he's doomed. And without me, I'll never know." Strand Releasing has debuted a new official US trailer for the upcoming release of a Moroccan film titled Adam, marking the feature directorial debut of Moroccan-British filmmaker Maryam Touzani. This first premiered in 2019 at the Cannes Film Festival and is only now getting an official release in the US this winter. Lubna Azabal stars as Abla, who runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter, Warda. When Samia, a young pregnant woman knocks on their door, Abla is far from imagining that her life will change forever. Gradually, Abla's resolve softens and her arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life. The cast includes Nisrin Erradi, Douae Belkhaouda, and Aziz Hattab. Bakery films are the best because you can almost smell & taste everything they're making right through the film.

Arab Stars of Tomorrow spotlights six talents from the Middle East and North Africa who are making their mark on the global stage.

In our fourth edition of Arab Stars of Tomorrow, Screen International celebrates six of the most exciting talents to emerge this year from the Middle East and North Africa. Egyptian director Sameh Alaa, Palestinian-Jordanian actress Tara Abboud, Saudi director Hana Al Omair, Lebanese actress Stephanie Atala, Moroccan actor Brice Bexter El Glaoui and Algerian actor Mehdi Ramdani are the breakout names of 2020.

Click on the links below to read the profiles of this year’s stars, and...

Nisrin Erradi, left, in Adam, is among the nominees for Best Newcomer Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival France’s answer to the Oscars - the Césars - will be delayed from its traditional February date until 12 March so that organisers can safely plan for a live event which will also be televised directly on Canal Plus.

The French Academy of Arts and Sciences have said that the ceremony for the 46th edition will “offer a moment of celebration and support for films, and more generally, culture. The ceremony will pay homage to all those who have released their films in 2020 in spite of the uncertainties and obstacles; to cinemas that did everything they could to welcome loyal moviegoers and, in particular, to all the artists and crew members who have suffered from this situation.”

Marina Fois will preside over this year’s César awards ceremony in Paris Photo: Fred...

Fourth edition is based on votes of 142 Arab and international critics hailing from 57 countries.

Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven and Maryam Touzani’s Adam received four nominations each in the first round of voting in this year’s Critics Awards for Arab Films.

A total of 142 Arab and international film critics from 57 countries are participating in the fourth edition of the awards, organised by the Arab Cinema Centre (Acc).

Suleiman’s comedy-drama It Must Be Heaven, which premiered in Cannes Competition in 2019, has been nominated for best film, director, actor (Suleiman) and screenplay.

Moroccan filmmaker Touzani’s feature directorial debut Adam,...

Competition screenings were held with only jury members and limited domestic guests in attendance.

South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has awarded its Grand Prize to Chinese film Damp Season, directed by Gao Ming, in its first Covid-19 pandemic edition with closed-door and online screenings only.

The festival held its awards ceremony at Cgv Jeonjugosa yesterday (June 1) with 80 people in attendance, including organising committee chairman Kim Seung-su, festival director Lee Joondong, jury members and directors and actors with films in the Korean competition. Its opening ceremony was broadcast online May 28 with guests wearing masks.

With a mandatory two-week quarantine...

Director-producer Nabil Ayouch and actor-director Maryam Touzani are attending the Marrakech Film Festival for the gala screening of Touzani’s debut feature, “Adam,” on Tuesday. The film, written by her, with the collaboration of Ayouch, and produced by the latter, is Morocco’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

“Adam” had its world premiere in Cannes Un Certain Regard, has won 16 prizes at major festivals, and has been sold by sales agent Films Boutique to more than 15 territories, including U.S., France, Benelux, Australia, Japan, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil.

The pic, starring Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi, is about a life changing encounter in Casablanca’s Medina between Samia, a heavily pregnant, single young woman from the countryside, and Abla, a widow with a vivacious eight-year-old daughter who has set up a bakery.

Touzani says that the inspiration for the film was...

Screen has announced the five filmmakers and actors selected for the third edition at the Cairo International Film Festival.

Screen International has announced the five filmmakers and actors selected for the third edition of its initiative Arab Stars of Tomorrow at the 41st edition of the Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff).

This year’s edition is in partnership with Ciff as well as leading Middle East distribution company Front Row and its partner Kuwait National Cinema Company (Kncc), a major exhibition force in the Gulf.

The initiative, first launched in 2016, aims to support five emerging cinema talents from the Middle East and North Africa,...

The AFI Fest has been rolling out its 2019 slate for months — since announcing Melina Matsoukas’ Queen & Slim as its opening-night film in August — and now we have the full lineup. Check it out below.

The festival, which runs November 14-21 in Los Angeles, will close with with Apple’s The Banker, starring Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicholas Hoult and Nia Long, and will feature the world premiere of Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell.

Here is the full lineup for the 2019 AFI Fest:

New Auteurs

Adam

Samia, heavily pregnant and alone, wanders through Casablanca, seeking shelter until Abla, a single mother, reluctantly takes her in. As the women discover each other’s inner struggles, their lives are transformed. A film festival darling, Maryam Touzani’s debut feature crafts a delicate tale of love through a confident female gaze. Dir Maryan Touzani. Scr Maryan Touzani. Cast Lubna Azabal, Nisrin Erradi, Douae Belkhaouda.

El Gouna Ff 2019: ‘Adam’ in Feature Narrative Competition‘Adam’, the debut feature by Moroccan director Maryam Touzani was awarded the El Gouna Bronze Star for Narrative Film.

Adam is a beautiful chamber piece about two vulnerable women: Samia (Nisrine Erradi), an unwed pregnant woman in this conservative Arab country who shows up in Casablanca’s Medina looking for a job and a place to spend the night, and Alba (Lubna Azabal), a young widow with an eight-year-old daughter (Douae Belkhaouda), who begrudgingly takes her in. Their relationship grows along with the pregnant woman’s baby and with their own emotional healing and development. Adam is a women’s meditation on life and the family.

The relationship between the two woman and the young daughter of the widow develops bit by bit and each step brings the viewer into their small circle. By the end, one feels a part of the family they have created.

The star of “Aladdin,” Egyptian-Canadian actor Mena Massoud, called for a greater diversity of storytelling in movies and television when he spoke at the glamorous opening ceremony Thursday of the 3rd edition of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival.

Massoud, whose credits include Amazon’s “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” and Hulu’s “Reprisal,” lauded “the power of art” to change society.

“As artists we have an extraordinary and rare privilege to tell the stories of our people, our land, our culture. They grip us, tear us apart, and put us back together. We are our stories.

“When I was growing up [in Canada] I never really saw people that looked like me on the big screen, and that made me feel like I didn’t belong there, and there wasn’t room for my story.”

He added: “When we represent all cultures with sensitivity and truth, we foster a society that supports all people.

Durban–“Les Misérables,” French director Ladj Ly’s riveting portrayal of racial division and unrest in the banlieues of Paris, won best picture at the 40th Durban Intl. Film Festival Tuesday night.

The jury described the film, which shared the jury prize in Cannes this year, as “a searing portrait of modern France which takes on issues of police brutality, racial tension, and of generations who keep repeating the same mistakes,” heralding its “raw power and complex ideas” while calling it “a piece of bravura filmmaking.” “Les Misérables” also won the award for best screenplay.

Ly’s incendiary film set the tone for a closing ceremony that, as it commemorated Diff’s 40th edition, offered a reminder that a festival born in a spirit of protest against the injustices of apartheid still had a vital role to play in the shaping of the South African and African conscience.

“Diff has...

With her debut feature “Adam,” Maryam Touzani allows her audience to sit back and relax comfortably into a beautifully made, character-driven little gem that knows when and how to touch all the right buttons. Taking the stories of two women, both frozen in existential stasis, and bringing them together in a predictable yet deeply satisfying manner, the writer-director ensures this scrupulously even two-hander about grief, shame, and the redemption of motherhood doles out emotional comfort food that’s neither too sweet nor too heavy. Graced by two exceptional leads given every opportunity to shine, “Adam” should charm audiences in global art houses.

Previously, Touzani has been known for shorts and her work with husband Nabil Ayouch, who here acts as producer as well as writing collaborator. Still, this is very much her own film, its emotional tenor and cinematic style markedly different from Ayouch’s work. In terms of structure and narrative trajectory,...

The beautiful story of two women who transform each other's lives, Maryam Touzani's feature directing bow Adam is a bright addition to Cannes' Un Certain Regard section. With great delicacy, she shows how Moroccan society censures a woman who gives birth outside marriage — not a terribly original theme, but here it is made heartrending by the superb performances of Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi in the lead roles.

It will rather inevitably be compared to another Moroccan film by a first-time woman director, Meryem Benm’Barek’s award-winning Sofia from last year, in which Azabal was also ...

The beautiful story of two women who transform each other's lives, Maryam Touzani's feature directing bow Adam is a bright addition to Cannes' Un Certain Regard section. With great delicacy, she shows how Moroccan society censures a woman who gives birth outside marriage — not a terribly original theme, but here it is made heartrending by the superb performances of Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi in the lead roles.

It will rather inevitably be compared to another Moroccan film by a first-time woman director, Meryem Benm’Barek’s award-winning Sofia from last year, in which Azabal was also ...