CHINA Edition
Hungarian Edition
Alkebulan, the first feature co-production between Morocco and Hungary, will have its world premiere in the main competition of the Marrakech International Film Festival. Directed by Moroccan-Italian filmmaker Yassine Marco Marroccu and led by Hungarian producer Andrea Taschler, the film is one of three world premieres in the 14-film competition. The festival lists Morocco, Hungary and Qatar as its production countries.
A shipwreck and a stolen amulet
In 1961, a merchant ship disappears off the Sahara’s Atlantic coast. Edoardo, an Italian émigré played by Mohamed Zouaoui, sets out from Casablanca to recover its cargo. A recent widower, he takes on the job as a way to escape his grief. Elsewhere, a young Tuareg shaman named Amastan is searching for a sacred amulet stolen from his community. Their paths converge at a coastal sanctuary, where the search for the ship opens up a larger question about the removal of African cultural treasures to Europe.
The story grew out of diaries that Marroccu’s grandfather, Edoardo Marroccu, kept over four decades. Marroccu and Taschler share screenplay credit, with Alessandro Conte credited as co-writer. The film moves between 1930s Italy and the Sahara of the early 1960s, placing a story drawn from one family’s records in the years when African countries were breaking with colonial rule.
How the production came together
Taschler’s Budapest-based Mirage Film made the feature with Morocco’s Eclipse Films and co-production partner Rif Film Morocco. The Hungarian National Film Institute and the Centre Cinématographique Marocain backed the project. The shoot began in Hungary in May 2022 and wrapped in Morocco in September 2023. Its 38 shooting days were spread across four blocks, with Moroccan locations including Casablanca, Tarfaya and the Sahara.
One stretch of the Casablanca coast stood in for another Moroccan city. The crew used a seaside district awaiting redevelopment to recreate Agadir in the aftermath of its 1960 earthquake. Hungary’s contribution extended to the crew and cast. Márk Győri and Gergely Pálos share cinematography credit with Djordje Arambasic, Kriszta Szakos designed the costumes, and Attila Menszátor-Héresz plays Efisio.
The film went to Sarajevo’s CineLink Work in Progress in 2025 and received support from Marrakech’s Atlas Workshops. It is Marroccu’s second feature, following Catharsys or The Afina Tales of the Lost World, which premiered at Tallinn Black Nights. In Marrakech, Alkebulan will compete for the Étoile d’Or before a jury chaired by Marion Cotillard. The festival runs November 20–28.
