Best Moroccan documentary movies

A portrait of the groundbreaking Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane, documenting a series of electrifying live performances in Tunisia, Morocco, and France; on the streets of Casablanca; and in intimate conversations. Storytellers through song and traditional instruments, and with connections to political theatre, the band became a local phenomenon and an international sensation, thanks to their rebellious lyrics and sublime, fully acoustic sound, which draws on Berber rhythms, Malhun sung poetry, and Gnawa dances.

In search of a subject for their film, a group of directors ask passers-by about their expectations of Moroccan cinema in the streets and bars of Casablanca.

More than two years after the sudden death of Michael Glawogger in April 2014, film editor Monika Willi realizes a film out of the film footage produced during 4 months and 19 days of shooting in the Balkans, Italy, Northwest and West Africa. A journey into the world to observe, listen and experience, the eye attentive, courageous and raw. Serendipity is the concept - in shooting as well as in editing the film.

On a handmade set re-creating her Casablanca neighborhood, a young Moroccan filmmaker enlists family and friends to help unearth the troubling lies built into her childhood.

In the Moroccan desert night dilutes forms and silence slides through sand. Dawn starts then to draw silhouettes of dunes while motionless figures punctuate landscape. From night´s abstraction, light returns its dimension to space and their volume to bodies. Stillness concentrates gaze and duration densify it. The adhan -muslim call to pray- sounds and immobility, that was condensing, begins to irradiate. And now the bodies are those which dissolves into the desert.

Don't Forget Me follows three Moroccan families with children on the autism spectrum whose parents are struggling to teach them without any help from the government. Autistic kids in Morocco do not have a right to go to school, and when parents are able to find a classroom where their child is accepted, it is up to them to pay for it. The documentary was inspired by Jackie Spinner's two sons she adopted from Morocco when they were infants. The boys also are autistic and now living in the United States. Spinner, a journalist and former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, returned to Morocco with her sons in 2017 essentially to answer the question: What might have happened if they had stayed?

Coming from every parts of Africa, runs a river of men and women prepared to cross entire continents, pursuing a life that is denied to those that live in the periphery.

The thrilling reality of an autistic and blind boy who accepts life with a smile.

In 2011, the villagers of Imider shut down a water pipeline to Africa's biggest silver mine to save their oasis. Eight years later, they sing while harvesting the fruits of their militancy.

After learning that his son, Yahya, has died at sea trying to get to Spain, Ahmed Tchiche must find a way to bring his remains back home to Morocco so he and his family can have a proper goodbye. A Spanish mortician, an NGO worker and an established Moroccan immigrant living in Spain all struggle to help Ahmed navigate the complicated process of repatriation.

We approach to invisible details for our eyes, figures disappearing as we move away from them, diluted in space. Parts that are integrated into the whole landscape. The remoteness as disappearance. The human figure betrays us here negligible small in the vastness of the territory, the voracity of the active vacuum that surrounds him. Images captured in the Atlas region in Morocco.

Boujad: A Nest In the Heat is a personal and anguishing look at issues of separation, independence and return. As director Hakim Belabbes chronicles his journey from his home in Chicago to visit his family in his hometown of Boujad in Morocco, his exploration of family relationships is self-conscious and at times painfully honest. We witness his most private moments with his family. Belabbes' film intimately explores the domestic spaces and religious rituals of intra-family relationships, especially when compounded by one member's break with traditional values.

The camera glides quietly over the residents and everyday life in the Moroccan city of Ouarzazate, located on the edge of the Sahara Desert. From the barren landscapes of the Atlas Mountains to a bustling center, the city's cinematic history is intertwined with its present of vast solar energy fields.

'All I Wanna Do' follows the dreams of a 48-year-old Simohamed who works as a parking guard and his 17-year-old son who acts in Hollywood films such as 'Charlie Wilson's War' posing as the crippled Afghan boy or Iraqi war victim. When his dreams of going to Hollywood are dashed he turns to music and forms a hip hop group with his father leaving his slum. Like fish out of water, the duo set out to meet their heroes, enter studios and radio stations for the first time in an adventure through the music industry of Casablanca.

Study of the relationship between observer and landscape in the contemplative experience. The view building the landscape from the necessary distance. The delimitation of its borders against the total continuum of nature. The observer immersed in the path of his gaze across the landscape. Resting the gaze in the details that make the globallity. The view selecting the space included as a landscape.

Study of the relationship between observer and landscape in the contemplative experience. The view building the landscape from the necessary distance. The delimitation of its borders against the total continuum of nature. The observer immersed in the path of his gaze across the landscape. Resting the gaze in the details that make the globallity. The view selecting the space included as a landscape.

Caught between chasing his past and accepting his impending end, a man follows his childhood memories through the dark alleyways and desolate cemeteries of Boujad, Morocco.

A film-experiment in six hundred takes, three seconds each, of a European's private images in Africa and of an African's images in Europe. A mutual perception of the one's and the other's native place.

The first Nass El Ghiwane Artistic Soiree was broadcast on national television.

Âmes et rythmes is a Moroccan film directed by Abdelaziz Ramdani, released in 1962.

A man from Tarfaya, penetrated by the magnificence of his country, the power of its beauty and the nomadic life of his ancestors goes in search of a great popular poet. He would be able to teach him wisdom, music, and the wonderful art of singing and poetry.

Documentary on aïta, a Bedouin musical style that originated in the countryside of Morocco. Women aïta singers are shown performing and discussing their nomadic lifestyle and profession.

Visually captivating, Men Lahm wa Salb (1959) films a day in the life of the Casablanca port, without dialogue or voiceover, with the images flowing to the rhythm of music.

Six and Twelve is one of a series of short films and documentaries produced under the auspices of the Centre Cinématographique Marocain in the years after Moroccan independence. While most of these were utilitarian in nature, Bouanani, Tazi, and Rechiche took a different route with this film, creating a modernist “city symphony” film that documented six hours in the life of the city of Casablanca. Combining a hard bebop soundtrack with stunning black and white cinematography and a radical editing style, the film stands as a document to the energetic experimentation of this period of Moroccan art and cinema.

Views of Casablanca, a true urban symphony.