Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy The Debut, with Julianne Moore as a shy housewife who throws herself into amateur theatre, will open the 23rd Marrakech International Film Festival on 20 November. The festival named its full selection in Rabat on Monday 2 November: 76 films from 39 countries, 10 of them world premieres, screening until 28 November. Fourteen first and second features compete for the Étoile d’Or under a jury led by Marion Cotillard.
Key facts
- Dates: 20–28 November 2026, at the Palais des Congrès, the Cinéma Le Colisée and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech
- 76 films from 39 countries; 10 world premieres; 11 national Oscar submissions; 12 films backed by the festival’s Atlas Workshops
- Official Competition: 14 first and second features for the Étoile d’Or, jury president Marion Cotillard
- Opening film The Debut (Jesse Eisenberg); Moroccan Oscar entry Strawberries (Laïla Marrakchi) plays in the Gala Screenings
- 11 Moroccan films across the sections, plus three films shot in Morocco
Twelve titles in the selection were supported by the Atlas Workshops, the festival’s industry and talent programme for Moroccan, Arab and African cinema; six of them are in the competition. Eleven films are their country’s submission for the Academy Awards, among them Morocco’s entry, Strawberries. Cotillard was named jury president on 13 October; the festival has not yet announced the other jury members.
The competition
The Official Competition is restricted to first and second features. Three of its 14 films are world premieres: Alkebulan, an adventure by the Moroccan director Yassine Marco Marroccu set in the Sahara in the 1960s and in Italy in the 1930s; Waves of Silence, a drama about migrant shipwrecks by the Iranian-Norwegian director Farzad Samsami, shot in Morocco with Amine Ennaji; and Rani and Salem Massalha’s Cairo Shadows, a thriller set in Egypt’s Coptic Christian community.
Several contenders arrive with prizes from Cannes, Berlin and Venice. Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s Ben’imana, set in Rwanda after the genocide against the Tutsi, premiered in Un Certain Regard and won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in May. Abdallah Al-Khatib’s Chronicles from the Siege won the Berlinale’s GWFF Best First Feature Award in the Perspectives section in February. In Venice in September, Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu’s House of the Wind, about a Cameroonian woman whose children have left for Europe, won the Orizzonti special jury prize and the Lion of the Future for a debut film, and Jacqueline Lentzou won Orizzonti best director for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra.
The full competition line-up:
- Alkebulan (Yassine Marco Marroccu; Morocco, Hungary, Qatar), world premiere
- Ben’imana (Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo; Rwanda, Gabon, France, Norway)
- Cairo Shadows (Rani Massalha, Salem Massalha; France, Belgium, Tunisia, Egypt), world premiere
- Chronicles from the Siege (Abdallah Al-Khatib; Algeria, France, Palestine)
- Congo Boy (Rafiki Fariala; Central African Republic, France, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy)
- A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra (Jacqueline Lentzou; Greece, Germany, France)
- Eklipse (Manuel Wetscher; Austria, Italy)
- Furies (Rami Kodeih; Lebanon, Brazil)
- House of the Wind (Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu; Cameroon, France, Belgium, Benin, Saudi Arabia, Qatar)
- Marie Madeleine (Gessica Généus; France, Haiti, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada)
- Our Share of Sand (Shalini Adnani; UK, India, Greece)
- Sad Girlz (Fernanda Tovar; Mexico, Spain, France)
- Waves of Silence (Farzad Samsami; Norway, Morocco, Sweden), world premiere
- The World Before (Yoon Dan-bi; South Korea, Japan, France)
Six of the 14 (Alkebulan, Ben’imana, Cairo Shadows, Chronicles from the Siege, Congo Boy and Furies) received Atlas Workshops support, according to the festival’s listing.
Gala Screenings
Eisenberg and Moore are expected to attend the opening, Variety reports. The Gala Screenings section has two world premieres from the region. Fellipe Barbosa’s Leila et la nuit, a France, Morocco and Brazil co-production starring Roschdy Zem and Marina Foïs, is inspired by the life of the Moroccan photographer Leila Alaoui. Omar Hilal’s His Weakest Creatures, a UK, Egypt and Saudi Arabia co-production, pairs the Egyptian stars Ahmed Helmy and Hend Sabry on screen for the first time, the festival says.
Also in the section are Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, with Andrew Garfield as the OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman; James Gray’s Paper Tiger, with Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller; Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, which John Turturro will present; and Laïla Marrakchi’s Strawberries (La más dulce), Morocco’s Oscar submission, about Moroccan women working as seasonal strawberry pickers in Spain. Strawberries is another Atlas Workshops alumnus.
Horizons, the 11th Continent and the Moroccan Panorama
Horizons, the non-competitive showcase, has 21 films, among them new work from Ryusuke Hamaguchi (All of a Sudden), Cristian Mungiu (Fjord, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May), Pawel Pawlikowski (Fatherland), Hirokazu Kore-eda (Look Back) and Nanni Moretti (It Will Happen Tonight). It also brings May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown, which closes Thessaloniki on 15 November, and Alain Gomis’s Dao, which won Seminci’s Golden Spike last month.
The Arab titles in Horizons include Mohammed Hammad’s Egyptian thriller Safe Exit, which took El Gouna’s Golden Star for narrative feature in October, Sara Ishaq’s Yemen-set The Station and Ahmed Hassouna’s Gaza documentary Citizen Osama. Ginevra Elkann’s The Roses of Marrakech, shot in Morocco, stars Fanny Ardant and Nisrin Erradi.
The 11th Continent, the festival’s strand for what it calls “free, innovative cinema”, has 13 films, including fiction by Danielle Arbid, Sompot Chidgasornpongse and Radu Jude, the documentary Edward Said: Between Worlds, the world premiere of Yohana Benattar’s documentary Bedeau, Transit Camp, and restorations of Farouk Beloufa’s Nahla (1979) and Idrissa Ouedraogo’s Tilaï (1990). The Moroccan Panorama has six films and opens with Tala Hadid’s documentary Bardi; three of the six are world premieres, including Mohamed Mouftakir’s Hoods. The Young Audiences and Families section has 11 screenings, among them the world premiere of Mohcine Besri’s All But My Mother.
What happens next
The festival’s Atlas Workshops run alongside it in Marrakech from 22 to 26 November. Their ninth edition has picked 30 projects and films from 14 countries out of 410 submissions: 14 projects in development, 11 films in production or post-production and five Moroccan projects in the Atlas Close-Ups strand. The Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho is this year’s patron.
Sources
- Marrakech International Film Festival, The Marrakech International Film Festival reveals its official selection (Rabat, 2 November 2026)
- Marrakech International Film Festival, Atlas Workshops unveils 2026 selection and announces Kleber Mendonça Filho as patron of 9th edition (Rabat, 19 October 2026)
- Deadline, Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut to open 2026 Marrakech Film Festival; full lineup unveiled (2 November 2026)
- Variety, The Debut to open Marrakech Film Festival, with Artificial and Paper Tiger among gala screenings (2 November 2026)
- Festival de Cannes, The 79th Festival de Cannes winners’ list (23 May 2026)
- Berlinale, Awards of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival (21 February 2026)
- La Biennale di Venezia, Official awards of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival (12 September 2026)
- Marrakech International Film Festival, Marion Cotillard to preside over the jury of the 23rd edition (Rabat, 13 October 2026)