Country: Morocco, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands
Year: 2024.
Runtime: 102′
Production: Les Films du Nouveau Monde, Ali’n Production
Director: Nabil Ayouch
Screenplay: Nabil Ayouch
Producers: Nabil Ayouch, Amine Benjelloun
Cinematography: Virginie Surdej
Editing: Nicolas Rumpl
Production design: Eve Martin (art director)
Music: Flemming Nordkrog
Touda only dreams of one thing: being a Sheikha, a traditional Moroccan performer empowered by the lyrics of the fierce female poets who came before her – with their songs of resistance, love and emancipation. Performing every evening in provincial bars under the lustful gaze of men, Touda plans to set her sights on leaving her small town for the bright lights of Casablanca where she hopes to be recognized as a true artist and also secure a better future for her and her son.
Nabil Ayouch, born in Paris in 1969, is a Franco-Moroccan director, producer and writer, and one of the voices that are placing the Moroccan cinema among the most successful emerging national cinemas. In 1997, Ayouch directed his first feature, Mektoub (1997). With several filmes directed throughout the decade, Horses of God (2012), a film about the suicide bombings in Casablanca, in 2003, became one of his main hits, sold to more than 40 countries and officially introduced, in the United States, by Jonathan Demme.
