“Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent” at the Sundance Festival in the United States

The film ” Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent “, written, directed and produced by Sofia Alaoui in her company Jiango Film with the help of the Moroccan Film Center, has been selected for the mythical Sundance Film Festival in the United States, which will take place at the end of January 2020.

It is the only Moroccan film attending Sundance. It will compete in the international competition, the first prize of which offers the possibility to qualify for the Oscars. The film will continue its run in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival, the largest short film festival in the world, which will take place in early February.

This is a very good start for this Moroccan short film, shot in the Amazigh language with non-professionals whom the director met in Imilchil, in the Atlas Mountains, a few months before shooting.

The film tells the story of Abdellah, a young shepherd, and his father, isolated in the Atlas Mountains, whose herd of sheep is dying. Abdellah has to get food for his animals in a trading village more than a day’s walk away. With his mule, he arrives at the village and discovers that it is deserted because of a curious event that has upset all the inhabitants. The film questions, with poetry and strangeness, the relationship to dogma, certainties and doubts and tries to bring a modest answer: to believe with certainty, shouldn’t we start by doubting? A preview screening in Casablanca will soon be held in anticipation of the Tangiers International Film Festival, which screens Moroccan films every year.

Biography

Born in Casablanca, Sofia Alaoui quickly got on a plane to Beijing. Her parents, thirsty to discover Asia, took her to travel the Silk Road, Mongolia, Little Tibet, Cambodia, etc. at a very young age. With each trip, she used her imagination to write and shoot short films. Years go by and her desire for cinema only grows. After an adolescence in Casablanca, she moved to Paris to study cinema, then directed videos and self-produced short films, before shooting her first produced fiction short film: “Kenza des Choux” which has been shown in about fifteen festivals. In 2015, she directed a first short documentary film, “Les enfants de Naplouse” (France 3, TV5), then recently a second short documentary, this time in Morocco, “Les vagues ou rien”, produced by AliNProduction and 2M, which was broadcast on television in March 2019 and attracted 2.3 million viewers.