Morocco’s ‘Halima’ Puts Land and Law on Screen

In Yassine El Idrissi’s film “Halima,” an 86-year-old woman faces developers seeking to demolish her home—and wins a legal battle with help from a corrupt lawyer. The story’s power struggle sits beside another one behind the camera: Idrissi says he sought funding from Morocco but couldn’t secure it, so he wrote the screenplay to make the film himself.

The film screened in the Official Narrative Competition at this year’s El Gouna Film Festival, where it received a special mention. Viewers were discussing it within hours of the screening. Khadija Amari plays Halima, who lives with her husband Miloud in a remote seaside home and earns a living harvesting clams, oysters and cockles. The film ends with waves moving around an empty chair on the shore as the credits roll.

A house, a court, a corrupt lawyer

Before the opening events, Halima lives in a house on a mountaintop, cultivating and selling marijuana. She organizes the business by shortwave radio and defends herself with what the article describes as expert, often heartless finesse. When developers seek to demolish her home, a corrupt lawyer helps her win the legal battle. The account gives no further details about the developers, the court or the case; it keeps the contest close to Halima and the place she stands to lose.

She has little patience for children. When they disturb her too often, she tears open their football. That hard-edged humor sits alongside a character who makes her living through work the film brings into view, rather than treating her as a symbol from a distance.

Idrissi said the subject was missing from Moroccan cinema. “Seventy per cent of the marijuana in Europe comes from Morocco, yet there are no films about Moroccan marijuana. Cultivation and medical use have been legalised, it was discussed in parliament, but the topic is just never broached. I wanted to change this,” he said. The film follows that subject through one woman’s life; the legal and parliamentary context appears in Idrissi’s account of why he made it.

Making the film without the fund

“I'd always wanted to tell a story in my own way. I write a lot and I don't waste time, and I wanted to secure a fund from Morocco but I couldn't so I wrote the screenplay in such a way that I could fund it myself,” Idrissi said. He also produced and edited the film to save money. “I knew that by the time I finished the film, I would be poor.” Then he laughed: “But I also knew I would be happy that I made my film just as I wanted.”

He wrote Halima first as a man, then changed the character after thinking about women working in the field. “I pictured a strong granny-type figure, just like my grandmother, also named Halima tough and determined.” He said his journalism had brought him into contact with people who used marijuana, and that their stories stayed with him.

Idrissi began writing stage plays when he was 12. He worked as a photojournalist for international agencies and the wide-circulation daily Al-Masaa, later earned a master's in film in Amsterdam, and made eight short and documentary films. His documentary “The Iranian Film” took part in the 2014 Cairo International Film Festival's Critics Week.

A production built around its own limits

The film was shot over 18 days across the course of a whole year, with the screenplay evolving during production. Idrissi began editing while filming was still underway so he could assess how much of the film was complete. He took side jobs to raise money for the rest of production and handled distribution himself because of distribution issues in the Arab world.

He targeted the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival and the Shanghai International Film Festival, as well as El Gouna. “I don't feel we need to go to Cannes to prove that we make good films,” he said. The Al-Ahram Weekly article called the film a highlight and discovery of the festival, praised its humor and noted that viewers were absorbed and on the edge of their seats. It also singled out Amari’s charisma and the amount of work Idrissi did himself. The film’s empty chair remains on the shore as the credits roll; its production story, meanwhile, is one of a filmmaker building a route around funding and distribution obstacles he says he encountered.