Belgium, France, Germany, Morocco and United Arab Emirates / 2011 / 117mins / Drama / Arabic

Tetouan, a Moroccan port city permanently under a low, heavy sky. Three friends, small time crooks, decide to rob the town’s biggest jewelry store to escape from a hopeless future. Malik is out of a job and madly in love with Dounia, a prostitute at the La Passarella nightclub. He’s in on the heist to rescue her and create a new life for them. Allal is the tough guy who can’t understand how Malik has fallen for a whore. He needs cash so he can be a player in the local drug trade and move up from snatching purses. Soufiane is the youngest of the three, drifting out of school and looking for direction. After his world is turned upside down, he has his own reasons for wanting to rob the Christian jewelry storeowner. But when the plan falls apart, the three friends must face their own, separate destinies, alone.

Faouzi Bensaïdi

After working in theater as a director and an actor, Faouzi Bensaïdi directed his first short film The Cliff (1997), which won 23 prizes in festivals in France and abroad. In 1999, he co-wrote the script for André Téchiné’s Far. In 2000, he directed two short films: The Wall, which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival and The Rain Line, which won a prize at the Venice Film Festival. In 2003, his first feature film A Thousand Months, won two prizes in Cannes and was distributed in over a dozen countries. In 2006, his second feature WWW: What a Wonderful World was selected for Venice Days in the Venice Film Festival and was distributed in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Denmark. In 2011, Bensaïdi made Death for Sale which once again was selected and won many prizes in numerous film festivals around the globe. His 2017 drama, Volubilis, was nominated for several awards and won the Tanit d'Bronze at Carthage Film Festival. Learn More