LAILA MARRAKCHI

Born in Casablanca, Laïla Marrakchi is a Moroccan director and screenwriter. She took a postgraduate degree in film studies at Paris III and worked as an assistant before directing several shorts. Her first feature, Marock, was selected for Un Certain Regard at Cannes and became a commercial success and a national controversy in Morocco for its love story between a Muslim girl and a Jewish boy in the westernised bourgeoisie of Casablanca. Rock the Casbah, premiered at Toronto, gathered a family across three days of mourning in Tangier to open up questions of inheritance, hypocrisy and the place of women. She has since directed episodes of Le Bureau des Légendes, Marseille, The Eddy, L’Opéra and Carême.