With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, BOUCHRA, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art, and resonant family drama. Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy, and formally adventurous, Bennani and Barki’s distinctive debut forges new ground in queer cinema.
Wrestling with writer’s block for her first film, Bouchra, a queer 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 romantic interests, Bouchra’s emotional reckoning with her mother and herself becomes her path to expression.
In English and Moroccan Arabic & French with English subtitles.
"The sheer intimacy with which everything in the film is presented, even with the relative remove of anthropomorphizing all the characters, is what makes it sing; the unrealness emphasizes the real narratives and emotions behind those digital facades." Juan Barquin, RogerEbert.com
"Despite grappling with intergenerational tension, the film also makes space for the erotic thrill of sexual intimacy, passionate encounters that lighten the weight of emotional turmoil. Far from reiterating tired binaries – tradition versus modernity, elders versus youngsters – the film embraces the beauty of contradictions with open arms." Phuong Le, The Guardian