Fatna a Woman Named Rachid
Fall Grants 2024 - Post-Production Stage
Helene Harder / Feature Documentary / Morocco, France, Belgium, Qatar / 80 min / Original Language: Arabic, French, Moroccan / Interests: Documentary
Synopsis
“In the National Archives of the Kingdom of Morocco, thousands of files await inventory, including those of victims of political violence from the ““years of lead”“. Among them is a file on Fatna El Bouih, who was forcibly disappeared and tortured as a 21-year-old student in the 1970s. Now 67, after years of reconstruction and silence, Fatna continues her fight discreetly, pursuing ““her dream of change”“ through different means. Despite a still challenging context, she is involved in prisons, advocates for gender equality and shares her story with Syrian women survivors of the Saydnaya prison.
As we follow her through Casablanca’s bustling streets, we witness her relentless activism, including one of her most challenging projects: organising a film festival at Oukacha Prison, the country’s largest juvenile detention centre. Images of modern Casablanca blend with archival footage from the 1970s, merging past and present. Fatna’s inner voice narrates her life, from her birth during Morocco’s independence to her involvement with the revolutionary left in the 1970s. ‘Fatna, A Woman Named Rachid’ is a sensitive and intimate journey that intertwines past and present, portraying a pioneer of women’s active engagement and her personal struggle to exist.
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About the Director
After surviving a serious car accident that disrupted her philosophy studies in Paris, Hélène Harder turned to filmmaking. Trained at UC Berkeley Film & Media School, she worked as an assistant director in New York and Paris and directed her first documentary, ‘Ladies Turn’, in Senegal in 2012, produced by Wendigo Films. Selected for festivals in 15 countries and awarded four times, the film has been broadcast on ARTE, TV5 Monde, and the American public broadcaster PBS. Since 2012, Hélène has worked regularly in Casablanca, where she met the activist Fatna El Bouih. Struck by her story, she began writing the feature-length documentary ‘Fatna, A Woman Named Rachid’.
Contacts
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Main Contact
Jean David Lefebvre
- Company:
- Abel Aflam
- Phone:
- +212661460680
- Email:
- contact@abelaflam.com