Faouzi Bensaïdi

A theatre and film director, screenwriter, and actor, Faouzi Bensaïdi directed his first multi-award-winning short film, The Cliff, in 1997. He then co-wrote Far with André Téchiné. In 2000, Bensaïdi directed two short films: Le Mur, presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Festival de Cannes, and The Rain Line, which won an award at the Venice International Film Festival. His first feature-length film, A Thousand Months (2003), received two awards when it was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. His following films were also selected for prestigious festivals: WWW – What a Wonderful World (2006) played at Venice; Death for Sale (2011) won the Art Cinema Award at the Berlin International Film Festival; and Volubilis (2017), which was selected for Venice Days and won seven awards at the Tangier National Film Festival. Together with Art for the World, Bensaïdi contributed two short films to omnibus films that focus on climate change: A Sunny Day as part of Interdependence (2019); and Why did you leave the horse alone? for Interactions (2022), a film about connections between humans and animals. For Summer Days (2022), he adapted a short story by Anton Chekhov, setting the film in contemporary Morocco. Deserts (2023), his latest feature film, was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. He has also appeared onscreen in films by Bertrand Bonello, Nadir Moknèche, Daoud Aoulad Sayad, and Jacques Audiard.