[LalaMimi]

By SHELDON KIRSHNER
Staff Reporter



Laila Marrakchi, left, and Morjana Alaoui at the film festival in Toronto recently. [Marian Curtis, Starpix]




“It’s a very personal film,” said Laila Marrakchi, referring to her first feature-length movie, Marock.

In what is surely a remarkable case of art imitating life, her film turns on a romance between a Jew and a Muslim in contemporary Morocco, a theme very close to her heart.

Marock, which was screened at the 30th annual Toronto International Film Festival, stars Morjana Alaoui and Matthieu Boujenah as young lovers who defy convention in a conservative society.

Alaoui portrays Rita, a 17-year-old sex kitten from a wealthy Muslim family, while Boujenah plays Youri, a Jew who happens to be the cutest guy in Casablanca, where Marock is set.

The pair share tender moments, knowing that their liaison raises eyebrows in both communities.

Like Rita, Marrakchi is a Moroccan Muslim from Casablanca – the commercial and cultural capital of Morocco – and the scion of a well-to-do family.

The similarities do not end there.

In Casablanca, Marrakchi had Jewish friends and her girlfriend dated a Jewish boy. And now she is married to a Sephardi Jew whose father was born in Algeria.

Marrakchi, 29, described Marock as a blend of fact and fiction. “It’s not my life in the film,” she said in French-accented English, “but it’s personal.”

Charming and attractive, she talked about herself in an interview several hours before she and Alaoui, 23, were due to fly back to Paris, where they live part of the year.

Marrakchi comes from a traditional but secular home. Her father owned a car dealership. She left the comforts of Morocco a decade ago to study cinema in France.

Before making Marock, a French production that cost about two million Euros, she directed three short films.

Like the characters in her latest film, the actors are Muslims and Jews.

Boujenah is a Jew of Tunisian origin, while Alaoui is a Muslim. The daughter of an architect, she is presently finishing a degree in journalism, but she may yet pursue a career in acting if opportunities present themselves.

Marrakchi, in Toronto for the first time, said her circle of friends in Casablanca mixed easily with Jews.

“The Jews of Morocco are Moroccans. There is no difference.”

In her estimation, 2,000 to 3,000 Jews currently live in Morocco, down from about 25,000 a generation ago.

She believes members of the Jewish community will remain in Morocco. “They like Morocco. It’s their country.”

Jews are not the only ones who fear the rising tide of Islamic radicalism in the Arab world, she said.

Her cousin was sitting in a restaurant in Casablanca a few years ago when suicide bombers affiliated with Al Qaeda struck. Fortunately, she emerged unscathed.

“Fundamentalism in Morocco is a danger, yes, but we can control it. Morocco is different than Iran.”

As for Muslim radicalism in France, Marrakchi said the government is dealing with it.

Marock, which is supposed to be released in theatres in France early next year, has already been screened in Morocco and at the Cannes Film Festival.

“The reaction was good,” Marrakchi said.

She hopes to sell the film to a distributor in Israel, where many Moroccan Jews live and which she has never visited.

She is currently working on another film that will also be shot in Morocco.

There is no place like home.