Laila Fadili

Five people with contrasting profiles compete for a position within Matsuika, a multinational corporation recently set up in Morocco. Following an interview with the C.E.O., they are advised to undertake a mysterious test in a secret location. It will determine who will hold the position. All five applicants accept and are led into a distressing bus with no windows. After endless driving, an accident occurs with the candidates trapped in the wreck. Thanks to a joint effort, they manage to evacuate the bus only to find themselves lost in the desert with their driver nowhere to be found. They start to wander, questioning the nature of the accident. Is it part of the test? Despite their will to survive and an urge to find clues, mirages of their most intimate fears begin to haunt them.

Seven years after the death of his mother, 13-year-old Karim has left Paris for Morocco with his father Messaoud, who has remarried and decided to return to his homeland. After a year at a French boarding school in Casablanca, Karim joins the newly blended family – including his new half-brother, stepmother and his father’s mother-in-law - for the summer in Boujad, a small town in central Morocco. Already muddled by the anxieties of adolescence, Karim struggles to understand their world and establish his place in a family of strangers. Meanwhile, his father - having discovered how little he really knows about Morocco after decades in France - is finding it difficult to adjust and even more challenging to relate to a boy beginning to show signs of rebellion. Their tumultuous relationship is at the heart of director Omar Mouldouira’s personal story, tenderly told, which encourages us to reflect on our own family bonds.