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Marrakech Film Festival Returns after Covid Cancellations

The Marrakech International Film Festival logo.
The Marrakech International Film Festival logo.
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Marrakech Film Festival Returns after Covid Cancellations

The Marrakech International Film Festival logo.
The Marrakech International Film Festival logo.

The Marrakech International Film Festival returns to the Moroccan tourist hub this month, with organizers hoping to woo star-struck fans after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.

British actress Tilda Swinton is set to attend, with Italian director Paolo Sorrentino heading up the jury, AFP said.

The festival, running from November 11-19, features emerging directors from across the world who will "shape the cinema of tomorrow", according to Prince Moulay Rachid, who presides over the festival's foundation.

Sorrentino, whose film "The Great Beauty" won a foreign-language Oscar in 2014, is joined by French actor Tahar Rahim, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki and German-American actress Diane Kruger.

Fourteen feature films from across the world, including six by women, will be in the running for the festival's top prize, the Gold Star.

Artistic director Remi Bonhomme told AFP that the festival "brings together different cinematic worlds, through 76 films (representing) 33 countries covering all continents".

The opening film is "Pinocchio", a remake of Carlo Collodi's animated tale by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.

Tributes will also be paid to American director James Gray and to Swinton, who headed the festival's jury in 2018 and 2019, as well as Moroccan director Farida Benlyazid and Bollywood star Ranveer Singh.

Known for its conversational side events, the festival will give the public the chance to question Iran's two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi.

US independent director Jim Jarmusch is also on the line-up, with events set to take place at a string of venues across the city with its famous red buildings.

Marrakesh's iconic Jamaa El-Fna square will host outdoor screenings of science fiction epic "Dune" and James Gray's "Ad Astra".

The city's famous Yves Saint Laurent museum will also host the "11th continent" collection of recently restored archive films, including "Muna moto" (1975) by Cameroonian Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa or "Beirut the Encounter" (1981) by Lebanon's Borhane Alaouie.

Other screenings will include films that have already debuted recently at top festivals, including "No Bears" by Iran's Jafar Panahi, who has been detained in Iran since July.

The film received the Special Jury Prize at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

Legal drama and Venice Silver Lion winner "Saint Omer", by French director Alice Diop, will also be screened.

Alongside the festivities, organizers will hold the Atlas Workshops, a program supporting young filmmakers from Africa and the Middle East with development and post-production that also awards prizes.

A previous winner, Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy, was awarded a Grand Prize at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes in July for his scathing "Feathers".

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Timothee Chalamet Channels Young Bob Dylan in 'A Complete Unknown'

FILE PHOTO: Timothee Chalamet attends a premiere of the film "A Complete Unknown" at Dolby theater in Los Angeles, California, US December 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Timothee Chalamet attends a premiere of the film "A Complete Unknown" at Dolby theater in Los Angeles, California, US December 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
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Timothee Chalamet Channels Young Bob Dylan in 'A Complete Unknown'

FILE PHOTO: Timothee Chalamet attends a premiere of the film "A Complete Unknown" at Dolby theater in Los Angeles, California, US December 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Timothee Chalamet attends a premiere of the film "A Complete Unknown" at Dolby theater in Los Angeles, California, US December 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo

Timothee Chalamet likened his journey to playing music legend Bob Dylan to an athletic feat. It turned into a marathon that stretched longer than the actor had expected.
Chalamet signed up to play Dylan in 2019. Then came a global pandemic and labor strikes in Hollywood, forcing two extended delays to filming.
"A Complete Unknown," the movie about Dylan's quick rise to stardom in the early 1960s, will finally be released in theaters on Wednesday, Christmas Day, by Walt Disney's Searchlight Pictures.
The disruptions gave the "Dune" actor more time to work out how to translate the towering figure to the big screen. Chalamet learned to play guitar and harmonica and worked with a vocal coach to evolve from his smooth "Wonka" singing to Dylan's distinctive, nasal voice, Reuters reported.
"It was the most I've ever taken on," Chalamet said in an interview, comparing the preparation to "the climbing of a steep hill."
"A Complete Unknown" chronicles Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 at age 19, his rapid ascent in folk music circles with songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind," and his divisive turn to electric rock music in 1965. The movie's title is taken from a line in the Dylan hit "Like a Rolling Stone."
Chalamet said he immersed himself in whatever video he could find of Dylan in the early '60s, a time of political and social upheaval in the United States.
"There's a finite amount of material available, especially in this period," Chalamet said. "At some point you can turn every page over. Not to say that I have, but if I haven't I've come damn close to it."
In the summer of 2023, Chalamet said, "I felt like I hit a runner's high" in the preparation.
"I felt like my muscles were strong and I was well prepared, and that every day was sort of just chipping away slowly at this bigger thing," he said.
Just as Chalamet was ready, Hollywood actors went on strike, and he worried that funding or casting might fall apart. The final go-ahead to start filming came in March 2024.
DYLAN WEIGHS IN
The real-life Dylan provided input on the script to director James Mangold but never met or spoke with Chalamet, though he recently described the star as "a brilliant actor."
"I'm sure he's going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me," Dylan wrote on social media platform X.
Chalamet's performance has earned praise from critics and predictions that he could garner his second Oscar nomination. He and co-star Edward Norton were nominated for Golden Globes.
Other co-stars include Elle Fanning, who plays girlfriend Suze Rotolo who appeared on the cover of the album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" but goes by the name Sylvie Russo in the film.
Monica Barbaro portrays singer Joan Baez, who had already landed on the cover of Time magazine when her career intersected with Dylan's. At the time, Baez was trying to figure out how to use her platform as an activist.
"Bob came in and was kind of a mess of a boy, but also an absolute poet and brilliant lyricist, and was putting words to all of these things that she felt," Barbaro said. "On top of his charisma, I think, she just was sort of magnetized to him."
Norton plays Pete Seeger, a banjo player and prominent singer of protest music who mentored Dylan.
"I think a lot of people have lost sight of who these people actually were and what they did and what they sounded like," Norton said. "If we can get some people tuning in again, that's probably worth the whole enterprise."
Chalamet agreed.
Dylan is "one of these names that is iconic to my generation," the 28-year-old said. "You know the name, but because he's such an elusive figure and a reclusive figure ... a lot of people my age don't know the music."
"This felt like an opportunity to be a bridge in some way and bring life to this amazing period," he added.