Moumen Smihi

In 1990, Moumen Smihi briefly re-located to Cairo in order to work in the shadow of one of the world’s largest commercial film industries. The film that resulted from his Cairo sojuourn is a complex, painterly critique of the Egyptian musical and cinema star system ...  (more)

Khalil, a young bachelor who tends to his family's farm on the outskirts of the city, is looking for his soulmate. He sees her in his dream: a young woman of exceptional beauty. He decides to marry her. By chance, the next day, in the alleys of the medina, he meets ...  (more)

Set in the mid-1950s when Tangier was still an international zone, El Chergui presents the city on the eve of its independence, as Aïcha resorts to magical practices to try to prevent her husband from taking a second wife. Around her, a society of women creates its ...  (more)

Directed by Moumen Smihi.  (more)

In Moroccan Chronicles, set in the ancient city of Fez, a working class mother, abandoned by her husband who has emigrated to Europe, tells three tales to her just-circumcised ten-year-old son. In the first, Smihi re-stages the Marrakech market scene from ...  (more)

This film, the first in what has become a semi-autobiographical trilogy for Smihi, follows the everyday experiences of Mohamed-Larbi Salmi against the changing Moroccan society. In 1950s Tangier, Larbi Salmi is a young, timid, pre-teen, boy, trying to make sense of ...  (more)

Shot in Paris after Moumen Smihi completed film school, Si Moh, pas de chance is an investigation into the lives of migrant workers in France. Connected back to the Maghreb by postcards and to his fellow migrants by shared experiences of alienation, the character ...  (more)

Larbi Salmi, the 15 year old son of Sidi Ahmed, a theologian and Lalla Alia, the daughter of one of the scholars of Fes, is full of desire to know women. His mother presents Rabea to him, a beautiful young girl, aged 17, and fascinated by love stories.  (more)

The film chronicles Henri Matisse's travels to Tangier as he seeks new motifs for his paintings from a Moroccan perspective. Henri Matisse made two trips to Tangier in early 1912 and in the winter of 1912-1913, seaching for new motifs for his paintings. The lush ...  (more)

Full of revolutionary romanticism and also influenced by western culture in his final years at high school, Salmi declares his atheism to his father, but hides from everyone his love for his English teacher, a beautiful young woman from Paris.  (more)