Ouarzazate, Morocco, where Hollywood builds its glory on the backs of local workers. From Kundun and Asterix to Gladiator, passing through every historical epic and the thousand-and-one versions of the Bible, the city’s residents all work as extras in films they will likely never have the chance to watch. araBehind the shine of these massive productions stand those actors, with their hopes and disappointments, living witnesses to the stark contradiction between the power of commercial cinema and the economic misery it is built upon.

The female Moroccan musicians known as sheikhates sing about the realities of life – about the land, nature, wars, mountains, crises and, of course, they sing about love.

The female Moroccan musicians known as sheikhates sing about the realities of life – about the land, nature, wars, mountains, crises and, of course, they sing about love.

Ali Essafi visited Bouanani three years before the latter’s death. The filmmaker, poet and novelist who also made drawings was leading a reclusive life in a remote village with his wife Naïma and many cats, living in the midst of huge piles of books and manuscripts.

La Septième Porte is the title of a 300-page film-history work dedicated to Moroccan cinema between 1907 and 1986. It was written by Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011) by hand over many years, but never published. Ali Essafi visited Bouanani three years before his death. Film excerpts, interviews and other documents delineate the artistic universe of a poet, filmmaker and essayist whose independence and integrity remained unsullied until the end.

Known as the “years of lead,” the 1970s in Morocco were marked by severe police crackdowns on dissent, with arbitrary arrests and detention and torture in secret prisons. To survive, a number of activists lived clandestinely. Essafi uses archival footage to tell the story of Aziz, a 23-year-old activist dreaming of freedom and democracy, who lived under an assumed identity for two years before he was identified and arrested.

Thami works as an extra in foreign films shot in a small village near Ouarzazate. He became a friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini, who shot in 1966 his movie Oedipus Rex in Morocco. Forty years later, an Italian crew comes to Ouarzazate to shoot a film. Thami thinks his friend Pasolini is back in town and thus triggering cinema fever in all the locals.

An amazing journey back in time to Morocco in the seventies, through a colorful collage of jazz music, posters and magazine covers, archive footage and cartoons; from the perspective of the artists, many of whom ended up in jail or disappeared without a trace under the tyranny of King Hassan II.