The original three-year project on Transnational Moroccan Cinema has now been extended by a generous follow-on grant from the AHRC. Over the past three years we have researched the increasingly global position of Moroccan cinema, in collaboration with some of the very best scholars that work on Moroccan cinema around the globe. We held two large international conferences, screened Moroccan films at festivals around Morocco and the UK, and organised roundtable discussions on the state of the globalising Moroccan film industry.

Through this activity, the original project aimed to explore the critical and commercial success of Moroccan cinema through a transnational lens, analysing the global reach of this ‘small’ national cinema through its relationship to diasporic filmmakers, the role of film festivals and international co-productions as well as the place of local and global audiences in the age of digital disruption.

We are now very excited to continue the research and collaborations, with a forthcoming book, an edited collection in the editorial stage, and – most excitingly – the world premiere of the freshly restored and subtitled masterpiece Door to the Sky by Farida Benlyazid (1985). And we will do more… Watch this space!

The project continues to place a strong emphasis on collaboration with filmmakers, festivals, policy makers and other industry figures through partnerships with the Tangier Film Festival and CCM, the London Film School and The Africa in Motion Film Festival.