AMANAR PROGRAM 2026

The Lab

28 and 29 September · World Storytelling Cafe · Closed session

The first edition of the AMANAR Development Lab accompanies five short film projects from Morocco at a decisive moment in their development. Two days of work with international mentors, behind closed doors, leading to a public pitch on 30 September.

The mentors

Five mentors accompany the selected projects

Morad Kertobi

CNC, France

Biography

Morad Kertobi is chargé de mission at France's Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC). Having managed several support schemes, among them funding for audiovisual programmes and for feature film script development, and having headed the CNC's Short Film Department, he now works on the accompaniment of emerging short film authors and their connection to the professional ecosystem. He also follows the question of the transition from short to feature filmmaking, and the CNC's international cooperation. He is the creator of Talents en Court, a scheme conceived to widen access and diversity in French short filmmaking.

Muhammad Taymour

EFPC, Chaos Films, El Gouna Film Festival, Egypt

Biography

Muhammad Taymour is an award-winning Egyptian producer, director and video artist born in 1985. In 2020 he produced I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face, directed by Sameh Alaa, the first Egyptian film to win the Short Film Palme d'Or at Cannes. Drawn to abstract, surreal and conceptual forms, his own multidisciplinary work explores time, memory and nostalgia; he directed the experimental documentary Patterns from the Sun (2019). After producing with Alexandria's Fig Leaf between 2018 and 2020, he founded the Egyptian Film Producers Club in 2021 to train and connect emerging independent producers, and launched Chaos Films in 2022 as a hub for short cinema. He lectures on film production at The Knowledge Hub Universities in Egypt and programmes short films for El Gouna Film Festival, where he previously headed the CineGouna Film Market.

Sophia Menni

La Prod and Fondation Tamayouz, Morocco

Biography

Sophia Menni is a Moroccan creative producer at La Prod, working with acclaimed directors on international co-productions. In 2018 she co-produced Amussu, a documentary on a Moroccan village's revolt against a polluting silver mine, which won the Jury Award at Final Cut in Venice in 2019 before reaching audiences at Hot Docs and IDFA. Her work is guided by a search for new narrative forms and a commitment to cinema that is bold in both form and content. She is currently in late development on Le Refuge by Talal Selhami (Atlas Workshops 2024, Frontières 2025) and the animated short The Bride of the Rain by Driss Ouaamar (Atlas Station 2025). She is also a member of the Tamayouz foundation.

Alice Kharoubi

Marché du Film, Festival de Cannes, France

Biography

Alice Kharoubi has worked in the film industry for more than twenty years, at the meeting point of programming, talent support and project development. A long-time member of the Festival de Cannes team, where her path has been closely tied to the short film and to the discovery of new talent, she is today Director of Film Programming at the Marché du Film, where she also created Cannes Makers, a programme accompanying the new generation of international sales professionals. Formerly head of Cannes Court Métrage, she has programmed short films for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and contributed to the programming of Festival Tous Écrans in Geneva. She has been part of the Red Sea International Film Festival team since its first edition, where she now leads the Souk Talents and Souk Connections initiatives. She has also served as artistic director of a screenwriting residency programme. Regularly invited to support emerging filmmakers and identify new voices, she sits on a number of film and script selection committees. She is an EAVE alumna.

Linda Mutawi

Fikra, Sweden

Biography

Linda Mutawi is an award-winning Jordanian-Swedish producer of Palestinian origin with more than twenty-three years in the international film industry. She is co-founder of Fikra, a Stockholm-based company producing politically resonant films between Scandinavia and the Middle East. A long-time collaborator of Tarik Saleh, she produced Eagles of the Republic, which premiered in Competition at Cannes, won Best Film at the Guldbagge Awards and was Sweden's submission to the Academy Awards. Before moving into independent production she was Head of Production Services at Jordan's Royal Film Commission, where she helped launch the Jordan Film Fund. She is a 2026 Producers on the Move participant, an EAVE alumna and a graduate of the PGA Diversity Workshop.

The filmmakers

Five short film projects from Morocco

Intissar El Azhari

Tenghity, the Forbidden Poem

Produced by ON SET PRODUCTIONS

Biography

Intissar El Azhari is a 23-year-old Moroccan filmmaker. She graduated from ISMAC with a degree in Film and Audiovisual Directing in 2023, and obtained a Master's degree in Documentary Filmmaking from UPJV in Amiens, France, in 2025. Passionate about cinematic creation and storytelling, she explores intimate stories and questions surrounding human vulnerability, the unseen, and memory. Her first fiction short film, For Me (2023), was screened and won awards at several national and international festivals. She is currently working on her fiction short film Tenghity, the Forbidden Poem. A new animated short film, Chakwa (Lamentations), is also in development.

Maria Dobli Bennani

Unsettled

Produced by Rita Berrada, La Prod

Biography

Maria Dobli Bennani is a French-Moroccan director and screenwriter born in Spain. She is drawn to characters caught between several worlds, to family ties, and to intimate stories that reveal broader social realities. After working for several years as a script doctor, she directed the documentary Amparo, 54 (2018) and the short film Comerte (2021). She went on to co-direct the series Tape (2025) with Adeline Prunier, winner of the Jury Prize at the Clichy Festival, and has collaborated with Nour-Eddine Lakhmari on Burn Out (2017) and K1 (2026). She now works between Spain and Morocco and is currently developing two short films as well as her first feature.

Saad Benidir

Avant Première

Biography

Saad Benidir is a Moroccan film director and senior editor, born in Casablanca in 1991. With over twelve years of experience in editing, he directed his first fiction short film, Waking Up (2023), screened at several festivals including the National Film Festival of Tangier and the Marrakech Short Film Festival. Avant Première (2026) is his second short film.

Rida Chebbi

Alo Mimti

Biography

Rida Chebbi, 24, is a director, screenwriter and actor working in both theatre and cinema. He learned writing, directing and acting from his father starting at the age of nine, and after years of training went on to receive numerous awards and certificates in both theatre and film. He made his first film, Black and White, in the aftermath of the pandemic lockdown, the turning point that marked his entry into the world of cinema. He has since directed two further short films, The Flower and the Rock and Who's the Real Zero, and is currently in pre-production on his fourth, Trézo.

Zahra Berrada

Fragments of an Ordinary Day

Produced by Oumayma Zekri Ajarrai, May Advisory Studio

Biography

Zahra Berrada is a Moroccan filmmaker born in Tangier. After a brief career in engineering, she turned to cinema and studied Film at La Sorbonne University and Paris 8 University, where she earned a Master's degree.

She worked on film shoots for Arte and History Channel in Morocco, and later collaborated with Arte and House on Fire Production in Paris. Alongside her filmmaking practice, she currently works in digital communication at Unifrance.

Her first self-produced short film, Bluebird (2017), was shot in Tangier. She later directed Alia (2022), produced by Paraiso Production and selected at numerous international festivals.

She is currently working on the short film Fragments of an Ordinary Day alongside her debut feature film, How to Disappear Fully.

The AMANAR team

Tarek Bouraque

Program Director

t.bouraque@marrakechshortfest.com

Read the biography

A Moroccan director, producer and educator, Tarek Bouraque's documentary work moves between observational and hybrid forms: borders, migration, collective memory, ethical representation. He is a faculty member at The Juilliard School, where he teaches the graduate seminar Film History and Grammar: A Global Perspective. He has directed and produced projects for Al Jazeera English, AJ+, National Geographic, Euronews, SIC (Portugal), ORF (Austria) and the MacArthur Foundation. His films have screened at Anthology Film Archives (New York), the Docfilm Institute (San Francisco) and the Academy of Film at HKBU (Hong Kong), and have been featured at the Africa Films for Impact Festival (Nigeria). He has also taught film and emerging media within the City University of New York (CUNY) and at the New York Film Academy. He holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College (CUNY) and a BA in Journalism from ESJ Paris/Casablanca, and is co-founder of Global Fronteras Production (France). He has worked across Morocco, Tunisia, France, the United States and Spain.

Hiba El Abkari

Head of Development & Production Program

h.elabkari@marrakechshortfest.com

Read the biography

A Moroccan producer and director, Hiba El Abkari has been working in the arts and culture sector for more than seven years. She holds a degree in documentary film directing and production, and is currently producing several projects at the meeting point of documentary and fiction, spanning both short and feature films. She began her career within the network of Instituts français in Morocco, where she established herself in the field of cultural programming, before going on to join other international organisations, where she has supported cultural projects at a strategic level, both in their programming and in their financing, in Morocco and abroad. Today she is fully dedicated to cinema. Her path has gradually turned towards production itself, with one clear ambition: to accompany films at the highest level, from development through to the shoot and their meeting with an audience. Working where artistic sensibility meets strategic and organisational rigour, she is committed to supporting filmmakers in bringing ambitious and demanding projects to life, in Morocco and abroad.

"AMANAR" is the Industry & Development Program of the Marrakech Short Film Festival, created to build a bridge between emerging filmmakers and the wider film industry.

Developed as a long-term extension of MARRAKECHsFF’s commitment to new voices, AMANAR goes beyond the festival experience by accompanying filmmakers through the different stages of their professional journey — from project development and mentorship to financing, production and international circulation.

Through talks, masterclasses, round tables, project development sessions and professional encounters, AMANAR connects emerging talents with filmmakers, producers, programmers, institutions and international industry platforms.

More than a meeting point, AMANAR is conceived as a space for continuity: a program where projects can grow, professional relationships can develop, and filmmakers can gain the tools and connections needed to move their work forward.

"Talent doesn’t travel on its own. It takes bridges. AMANAR is where we build them."