Bouchra is a young coyote, filmmaker, and lesbian. In her next film, she wants to tell the story of coming out to her mother, surrounded by friends. A visually sophisticated and disturbing study of vulnerability, it explores alienation in silence and the weight of taboo, while offering a luminous declaration of love to all mothers. (This film is screened with Visit into Irradiated Land.)

Bouchra is a live-action–animation hybrid documentary that lightly fictionalizes real people and events. Bouchra is a jackal living in New York and working as a filmmaker. Her complicated life encompasses a former girlfriend, her parents and aunts in Casablanca, and an unexpected romance. Her bond with her mother Aicha, a cardiologist whose affection has never wavered, has been deeply scarred by the silence that followed Bouchra’s coming out. The young artist must navigate a creative crisis, a strained relationship with her mother, and the pleasures and dangers of life in New York.
Co-written by visual artists and filmmakers Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki, and Ayla Mrabet, the film is a marvel of invention. Its narrative draws on real conversations Bennani recorded with family and friends in Morocco. Voices captured in cars, kitchens, and over the phone are re-embodied through animated animal characters. The soft textures of these anthropomorphic avatars allow painful truths to surface with surprising ease. Within its singular audiovisual style, the playful world created by the animal characters merges seamlessly with documentary candor.

• ProducerOrian BARKI, Meriem BENNANI, Fondazione PRADA, Hi Production, Cecile WINCKLER, Octavia PEISSEL, Ella BISHOP, Pau SURIS
• Screenplay Orian BARKI, Meriem BENNANI
• Cinematography John Michael BOLING
• Edit Orian BARKI, Meriem BENNANI
• Sound Taul KATZ
• Music Flavien BERGER
• Cast Yto BARRADA, Meriem BENNANI, Dounia BERRADA, Bouchra BENZEKRI, Salima DHAIBI, Orian BARKI

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