BOUCHRA

Fri, Jun 26

Fri, Jun 26

Director: Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki Run Time: 83 min. Release Year: 2026

Starring: Ariana Faye Allensworth, Fayçal Azizi, Hassan Hamdani, Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki

Wrestling with writer’s block for her first film, Bouchra, a queer Moroccan jackal living in NYC, starts having difficult yet overdue phone calls with her mother in Casablanca that begin influencing the project. Balancing the precarity of working as an artist in New York, the rift in her identity between her two homes and an array of friendships and romantic interests, Bouchra’s emotional reckoning with her mother and herself becomes her path to expression.

With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, BOUCHRA, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki (best known together from their 2020 web series 2 LIZARDS), is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art and resonant family drama. Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy and formally adventurous, Bennani and Barki’s distinctive debut forges new ground that “will make it a classic of queer cinema for years to come” (Next Best Picture).

“An aesthetically bold, personal animation…an inventive approach.” Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage

“Far from reiterating tired binaries — tradition versus modernity, elders versus youngsters — the film embraces the beauty of contradictions with open arms.” Phuong Le, The Guardian

“[U]nusual, surprising, and often moving….” Lawrence Garcia, In Review Online

“[A] surreal, animated autofiction musing on queerness, creativity and the North African diaspora. [E]verything about it is made with such intelligence and rigour….” David Katz, Cineuropa

“Between the animation style and the decidedly adult content, the film’s ultimate sweetness is completely disarming. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, though, as it’s rooted in the same emotional honesty that marks all of the film’s dialogue. That quality will make it a classic of queer cinema for years to come, but its unique wavelength will make it a film that means everything to young adults who are already on that wavelength, and that makes it worth everything.” Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

BOUCHRA

Trailer