Algeciras (Cádiz), (EFE).- The Tarifa Tangier-FCAT African Film Festival opened on Friday night for the first time in the Moroccan city.
The recently restored Cinema Alcázar, an iconic building from the time of the Spanish Protectorate in the city, has hosted a gala in which the Cervantes Institute of Tangier has collaborated with the support of the Spanish Embassy in Morocco and the FRS company.
As explained by the organization in a statement, the ceremony was presided over in Spanish and Dariya by the mayors of Tarifa (Cádiz), Francisco Ruiz, and that of Tangier, Mohammed Bachir, an inauguration in which they welcomed the public, in full street, the Dakka Marrakchia from Tangier with their popular Berber music.
The event, preceded by music and a tea with Moroccan pastries, was attended by the director of the Instituto Cervantes in Tangier, the writer Javier Rioyo, and the cultural attache of the Spanish Embassy in Morocco, José María Davó.
The Strait of Gibraltar as a link
For the mayor of Tarifa, “the FCAT has been working for 20 years forging cultural dialogue between the two continents, as well as the historic relationship between the north of Morocco and the south of the Iberian Peninsula.”
“The festival claims the Strait of Gibraltar as a link that unites and not as a sea that separates”, he said.
The Granada-Tangerina actress Romina Sánchez has been the master of ceremonies at a gala in which the music has been put by the Tangerine singer Mouna Diaj accompanied by the guitarist Mounir Tkako.
At the end of the ceremony, the director of the FCAT, Mane Cisneros, gave way to the cinema by presenting the Tunisian director Erige Sehiri, director of the film that opens the FCAT 2023, ‘Among the fig trees’, a film that was also enjoyed by the audience of Tarifa at the Alameda Theater.
Festival until May 7
This debut film by Sehiri in the fiction feature film was the Tunisian bet for the Oscars for Best International Film, as was the case with ‘Alcarrás’, by Carla Simón, a film with which ‘Among the Fig Trees’ bears many similarities, not only in the story it tells, but also in the atmosphere, the treatment and the way of filming with non-professional actors and actresses.
“I wanted to put a face to these normally invisible workers,” says the director of a story that arose from a chance meeting with a Tunisian rural woman named Fidé.
“I started writing while listening to L’Estaca, a protest song born under Francoism. In the Tunisian Arabic version of it, version by Yesser Jradi, it is a song about work, love and freedom, which I naturally chose as music for the opening credits of the film, ”says the director.
The festival continues this weekend with a program that will last until next Sunday, May 7. EFE