Now in its eighth year, the Atlas Workshops have seen hundreds of projects in all stages of development and production pass through its doors at the idyllic Beldi Country Club on the outskirts of Marrakech.
Twelve projects in development and 10 features shooting or in post-production are participating in the Workshops this year. They include the next projects from Scandar Copti and Asmae El Moudir.
The Workshops take place alongside the festival from November 30 to December 4.
Romanian director Cristian Mungiu is the patron.
Hédi Zardi, head of the programme, talks to Screen to find out what themes are emerging in the current projects, the films to have graduated from the Workshops and gone on to world premiere in prestigious A-list festivals and where the challenges ahead still lie as the region grows in prominence.
What themes emerged from the projects selected for this year’s Workshops?
I found a lot of empathy and emotion. [For example] in a documentary like Akal by [Moroccan filmmaker] Basma Rkioui where she rediscovers archival footage of her as a little girl, there is a lot of nostalgia. The previous year, I had been impressed by their bold projects with strong topics and how they were representing genre. Now we have epic, emotional stories. And that’s promising, because audiences are going to the cinema to feel something.
There are also more women as the project holders — directors or producers — which is interesting because compared to European countries where there are quotas to encourage that, here it happened totally naturally.
Please talk a little about the four-day online component of the Atlas Workshops that has already taken place.
It’s an idea we started last year, to spread out to regions or people who are not attending Marrakech in person. The participating projects have extensive sessions on co-production tools, which need to be very long and focused. Instead of having one long session in Marrakech, we did three sessions of two hours each online, to allow them to focus on the information.
We also did a focus on distribution and invited distributors from five regions of the world, including Asia, North America, Latin America, Europe and MENA and Africa, to share the reality of their markets today Because so many filmmakers arrive at A-list festivals to launch their films, films which they have been working on for five or even seven years, during which time they have been disconnected from the world, the first time the film meets the reality of the business is sometimes a very violent match.
The filmmakers also had sessions with international publicists, and those in the Arab world and Europe, to find out what the trades are covering and what the realities are of the media landscape today . And we do the same with sales agents too, addressing what the new markets are and where these appear more vibrant and receptive to each individual project.
Tell us what you have planned for the sessions in Marrakech, within the grounds of the Beldi Country Club.
In Marrakech, it’s a creative lab. There will be more private, in-person sessions in small groups, or individual sessions about acting, working with a DoP, working with a sound designer, working with a colour grading supervisor, working with a screenwriter, etcetera.
Then the second part of the Atlas Workshops is about meeting with the industry guests.
What is the progress of some of the projects that went through the 2023 and 2024 Workshops?
From last year’s projects, Lucky Girl by French-Senegalese filmmaker Linda Lô, [which won the development award at the 2024 Workshops], was accepted into the Torino FilmLab, and Murad Abu Eisheh, the Jordanian director of the project The Orange Grove just received [state] funding to start shooting.
Lina Soualem’s Alicante, which came to the Atlas Workshops as a first workshop [for the project], has since had an amazing journey [it was selected for labs including Les Arcs Coproduction Village and Cairo Film Connection]. She is now writing.
Of the post-production projects in 2024, the Nasser brothers’ film Once Upon A Time In Gaza premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard, [as did] Aisha Can’t Fly Away by Morad Mostafa, which will be in competition this year in Marrakech.
Cherien Dabis’s All That’s Left of You was in Sundance, Behind The Palm Trees by Moroccan filmmaker Meryem Benm’Barek, will world premiere in Marrakech, while Lebanese filmmaker Cyril Aris’s It’s A Sad And Beautiful World premiered in Venice, and will screen here in Marrakech. It has been sweeping many awards around the world.
Another beautiful project, Laundry by Zamo Mkhwanazi, from South Africa, was a project in development in the first year of the Atlas Workshops, and was in post-production last year. Laundry premiered at [Toronto International Film Festival] this year, and will now be in competition here. We are starting to close this beautiful and successful circle.
What are the challenges that remain for the Workshops?
We are developing the dynamic of distribution and sales agents and are launching the Atlas Distribution Meetings, which I’m very proud of but it’s also a challenge. This is an extension of the Atlas Distribution Award.
As the region becomes more vibrant and creative, sales agents are becoming more attentive of us to scout projects. These invited sales agents and distributors will screen the films in the official selection but also cover the projects in development and in production. They will have their own space within the Baldi to hold meetings.
As all of these programmes are now under the umbrella of the Atlas Programs, it becomes a very busy industry event where we need to make sure we maintain the level of quality.
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