El Gouna FF 2019: ‘Adam’ in Feature Narrative Competition

‘Adam’, the debut feature by Moroccan director Maryam Touzani was awarded the El Gouna Bronze Star for Narrative Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $15,000).

Adam is a beautiful chamber piece about two vulnerable women: Samia (Nisrine Erradi), an unwed pregnant woman in this conservative Arab country who shows up in Casablanca’s Medina looking for a job and a place to spend the night, and Alba (Lubna Azabal), a young widow with an eight-year-old daughter (Douae Belkhaouda), who begrudgingly takes her in. Their relationship grows along with the pregnant woman’s baby and with their own emotional healing and development. Adam is a women’s meditation on life and the family.

The relationship between the two woman and the young daughter of the widow develops bit by bit and each step brings the viewer into their small circle. By the end, one feels a part of the family they have created. Such an intimate film, modest and without pretensions, casts a sort of spell which is difficult to describe but which awakens powerful emotions.

Emotions are also revealed by a friendly local merchant who, like us, watches and increasingly admires the widowed Alba.

Maryam Touzani said,

The characters in my films are women, because as a woman, I am moved by the struggles of women. Adam is inspired by a true encounter with a pregnant unwed mother many years back. She had knocked at my parent’s door, looking for shelter, desperate and alone. I experienced the last month of her pregnancy by her side, until the moment she gave birth and gave her child up for adoption because she felt she had no other choice. That experience deeply moved me, and I carried her within me for years. Until the day when I got pregnant myself. As my pregnancy advanced, I found myself thinking of her constantly. Of what she had gone through, of her pain. And so, I started to write, instinctively.

Barbara Scharres, writing for RogerEbert.com says,

Both actresses are superb in their ability to express great ranges of emotion in tight close-up. Samia, youthful and merry despite her circumstances, forces Alba out of mourning in what is literally a semi-hostile dance of transformation. The tables are turned when Samia gives birth, and rejects the squalling infant.

‘Few things belong to us,’ observes Samia, referring to the place in which women find themselves in life. In Adam, Touzani effectively gives women their own.

In the near-impoverished environs in which they toil, these two women, in the end, create a home rich in love in an atmosphere created by cinematographer Virginie Surdej’s artistic techniques and Pilar Peredo’s elegant sets.

Maryam Touzani was born in 1980 in Tangier, Morocco, where she spent her youth before moving to London to pursue her university degree. She worked as a writer alongside her husband Nabil Ayouch on his acclaimed film Razzia (2017), as well as portraying one of the main characters. Her debut short film When They Slept (2012) was screened at several renowned international festivals and received a total of 17 awards. Her second short film Aya Goes to the Beach (2015) also gained significant recognition and was granted the Audience Award at the Cairo International Women’s Film Festival. Adam (2019), Touzani’s first feature film, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival.

Says Touzani,

I am eager for the film to screen in Morocco and meet its audience. My deepest desire is that it may bring about a constructive social debate, that it may be a trigger for change.

Morocco’s submission for nomination for Best International Feature Academy Award.

The film appeals to international sensibilities. As seen by its sales thus far, it has sold to Argentina (Mirada), Benelux (Cineart), France (Ad Vitam), Morocco (Zaza), So. Korea (Watona) and Switzerland (FilmCoopi).

International sales by Films Boutique.

Morocco, France | 2019 | 98 min Arabic, with English Subtitles

PRODUCERS : Nabil Ayouch

PRODUCTION COMPANIES : Ali N’ Productions, Les Films Du Nouveau Monde, Artemis Productions

SCREENPLAY: Maryam Touzani, Nabil Ayouch

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Virginie Surdej

EDITING: Julie Naas

SOUND: Nassim Mounabbih

CAST: Lubna Azabal, Nisrin Erradi, Douae Belkhaouda, Aziz Hattab, Hasnaa Tamtaoui