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.

Ahmed Bouanani’s Al-Manabe' al-Arba'a (1974), a very low-budget fantastical adaption of a poetic fable, features his wife Naïma Saoudi, who also worked as an art director and set designer. It is his only film in colour, which convinced him that his vocation was to work in black and white.