Yassine El Idrissi’s drama “Halima” has entered the Golden Goblet Awards Main Competition at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, where it celebrated its world premiere ahead of a press conference.
The selection marks Morocco’s return to SIFF’s premier category after a 27-year gap – the last Moroccan film to compete at that level was Saad Chraibi’s “Women … and Women” (“Femmes … et Femmes”), a contender at the festival’s 4th edition in 1999.
The film follows Halima, an elderly woman living quietly by the sea whose routine is upended by an unexpected phone call, compelling her to confront a past she has long suppressed – one that includes involvement in the illegal cannabis trade. The narrative shifts between the present and memories from five years earlier.
El Idrissi, who also produced and wrote the film, traced its origins to his years working as a photojournalist across Morocco. “Before I started working in cinema many years ago, I was a photojournalist, and that allowed me to travel across Morocco and meet all kinds of people,” he said. “Among them were many individuals on the margins of society, just like our protagonist Halima.”
Rejecting heavy visual effects, El Idrissi built the film’s texture through natural lighting and ambient sound, including a guitar piece drawn from a well-known Moroccan song about poverty and hardship in the Rif Mountains region – used with the original singer’s permission.
