Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s drama Happy Holidays has clinched the Étoile d’Or for Best Film at the Marrakech Film Festival.
The Jury Prize was awarded ex aequo to Argentinian director Silvina Schnicer’s The Cottage and Somali and Austrian filmmaker Mo Harawe’s The Village Next to Paradise. Damian Kocur won the Best Directing Prize for his drama Under the Volcano, which is Poland’s Oscar entry this year.
The prize for Best Performance by an Actress was shared by Wafaa Aoun and Manar Shehab for their performances in Happy Holidays, while Roman Lutskyi won the award for Best Performance by an Actor for his work in Under the Volcano.
Happy Holidays is a contemporary Haifa-set drama in which a minor car accident sets off a chain of events, unraveling lies and unspoken truths that sow division within a multifaceted patriarchal society.
The film world premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons sidebar this year, winning Best Screenplay. It has also since won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, while German producer Dorothe Beinemeier, won the producers award for the co-production at the Hamburg Film Festival.
This year’s star-studded jury was presided over by Luca Guadagnino and also featured Iranian director Ali Abbasi, Indian director Zoya Akhtar, US actor Patricia Arquette, Belgian actor Virginie Efira, Australian actor Jacob Elordi, British-US actor Andrew Garfield, Moroccan actor Nadia Kounda, and Argentinian director Santiago Mitre.
The festival’s 21st edition – running from November 29 to December 7 – was attended by a record 40,000 spectators, including 7,500 children and teenagers as part of the Young Audiences and Families program.
Other highlights of the festival included tributes to Sean Penn, David Cronenberg and late Moroccan actress Naïma Elmcherqui, who died just weeks before this year’s edition.
Penn delivered was characteristically outspoken as he received his award on the opening weekend, calling on the cinema world to ditch political correctness, saying: “I encourage everyone to be politically incorrect, to embrace diversity, and to keep telling stories.”
Beyond the jury and honorees a raft of A-list talent attended this year’s edition to participate in conversation events: including Tim Burton; Alfonso Cuarón, Ava DuVernay, Todd Haynes; Justin Kurzel, whose new film, The Order, opened the festival; Mohammad Rasoulof; Walter Salles and Justine Triet among others.
Running alongside the festival, the seventh edition of its industry strand, the Atlas Workshops, was attended by 340 international professionals, who discussed 27 film projects in development or production.
In a sign of the meeting’s growing legacy, 12 completed features supported by the initiative were selected for the Marrakech film program this year, including Harawe’s Jury Prize winner, The Village Next to Paradise.
Among the guests at the Atlas Workshops this year was U.S. director Jeff Nichols as its 2024 patron and lead mentor, in a role that saw him give individual feedback to the in-development projects.
Talking to Deadline, shortly after touching down in Marrakech for the event, Nichols revealed that he had been writing the screenplay for a new original feature on the flight from the U.S.
The workshops meted out cast nine prizes, split between projects development and in post-production.
The top €25,000 Atlas Prize for Post-Production went to Morad Mostafa’s Aisha Can’t Fly Away (Egypt), followed by the €20,000 prize for Chronicles from the Siege by Abdallah Al Khatib (Palestine), and then €10,000 award for It’s A Sad And Beautiful World by Cyril Aris (Lebanon), and €5,000 for Bardi by Tala Hadid (Morocco),
The jury comprised sales agent Grégoire Melin (Kinology), Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Giona Nazzaro and Malika Rabahallah, Director of Filmfest Hamburg.
The top €30,000 Atlas Prize for Development went to Princesse Téné by Fabien Dao (Burkina Faso), followed by €20,000 for Lucky Girl by Linda Lô (Senegal) and €5,000 each for Samir, The Accidental Spy by Charlotte Rabate (Syria) and Ici Repose by Moly Kane (Senegal)
The jury for the four Atlas Development prizes comprised filmmaker Yasmine Benkiran and producers Dora Bouchoucha and Philippe Bober.
In a final prize, the ArteKino International Prize, awarded by the Franco-German channel Arte, was granted to Alicante, by Lina Soualem (Algeria).
Over the course of its seventh editions, the Atlas Workshops platform has supported 152 projects and films, including 60 from Morocco.
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