AICHA

25 Min | Sanaa El Alaoui | Morocco

A 17-year-old girl struggles with an emotionally distant mother as her life takes a tragic turn. The mother joins a mystic ceremony to face her grief and the lost bond with her daughter.

#taboo #suicide #stigma #trauma #sexualassault #mentalhealth #women’s rights

live action

fiction

Director

Sanaa El Alaoui

Moroccan director and screenwriter Sanaa El Alaoui is a graduate of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where her research on the art of the long take in filmic language earned her the Best Thesis of the Year award, and the University of Oxford, where she explored Moroccan cinema’s evolution from the colonial past to the post-colonial present.

El Alaoui made her directorial debut with Icarus, a Hungarian short documentary. The film received the Bronze Award for Best Short Documentary at the 4th Quarter of the Queen Palm International Film Festival in California, Best Short Documentary at the International Film Festival of Oued Noun, the Grand Prize for Best Short Film at the National Film Festival of Cinema of the Margin in Guercif, and the Jury Award for Best Short Film at the International Film Festival of Casablanca.