The Marrakech International Film Festival (November 24 – December 2) will honour Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen and Moroccan filmmaker Faouzi Bensaïdi with its Etoile d’Or (Golden Star) for their contributions to cinema.
Bensaïdi will also be in town to present a Gala screening of his latest film Deserts, a Casablanca-set friendship drama that premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. Mikkelsen stars in Nikolaj Arcel’s historical epic The Promised Land that will get a special screening at the festival after debuting in Venice.
The festival cited Mikkelsen’s “audacity, his magnetism, and his ability to reinvent himself with brilliance from one film to the next” and said he “intrigues, terrifies, or charms from role to role.” It called Bensaïdi “a beacon of Moroccan cinema at home,” “one of its most illustrious representatives on the international scene” and “a master of the poetic-burlesque” who “has “built a remarkable body of work of remarkable singularity and profound humanity.”
Mikkelsen and Bensaïdi will also participate in the festival’s In Conversation… programme alongside actors Simon Baker, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, actor-director Viggo Mortensen and filmmakers Bertrand Bonello, Anurag Kashyap, Naomi Kawase and Andrey Zvagintsev.
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