Moroccan Studies Program hosts filmmaker Nabil Ayouch

In March 2013, acclaimed Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch visited Harvard to screen and discuss two of his films, the documentary film My Land (2011) and his most recent film, shown at Cannes in 2012, Horses of God (2012). Ayouch’s visit was organized by the CMES Moroccan Studies Program and co-sponsored by Dartmouth College. The screenings and discussions were attended by approximately eighty people, including Harvard students and faculty, as well as members of the Moroccan community from the Boston area.

Nabil Ayouch is a director and producer whose work includes nine films, for which he has won over forty awards at international film festivals, including Best Documentary at the Tetouan Mediterranean Festival (2012) and Best Music and Best Editing at the Tangiers Festival (2011). His 2012 film Horses of God, screened on March 8, 2013 at Harvard, was inspired by the Casablanca suicide bombings of May 16, 2003. It tells the story of boys growing up in a Moroccan slum, an environment exploited by fundamentalist recruiters looking for terrorists and suicide bombers. Ayouch’s first documentary film, My Land, which was screened March 7, 2013, features interviews with elderly Palestinians now living in refugee camps in Lebanon after leaving their homes in 1948, and young Israelis who live their now.