Sunday Docs
Directed by Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani
With Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki, Ariana Faye Allensworth
Not Rated, 85 minutes
In English, Arabic, and French with English subtitles
Wrestling with writer's block for her first film, Bouchra, a Moroccan jackal living in NYC, starts having difficult yet overdue phone calls with her mother in Casablanca that begin influencing the project. Balancing the precarity of working as an artist in New York, the rift in her identity between her two homes and an array of friendships and queer romantic interests, Bouchra's emotional reckoning with her mother and herself becomes her path to expression. With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, Bouchra, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki (best known together from their 2020 web series 2 Lizards), is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art and resonant family drama. Deeply felt and formally adventurous, Bennani and Barki's distinctive debut forges new ground.
Sponsored by the Meg and John P. Brogan Endowment for Documentary Film.