Mostafa Derkaoui

Mostafa Derkaoui was born in 1944 in Oujda, Morocco. He studied cinema at IDHEC in Paris and later at the National Higher School of Film, Theatre, and Television in Łódź, Poland. He directed several short films, including Les quatre murs (1964) and Amghar (1968), before making his first feature film, About Some Meaningless Events (1974). The film was banned from public screening by Morocco, and shown only once in Paris in 1975 and clandestinely at the Khouribga Festival in 1977 in front of the Cahiers du cinéma team. Despite the ban being lifted 27 years after its completion, the film never had a theatrical release or television broadcast. Derkaoui contributed to collective films such as Les cendres du clos (1975) and La Guerre du Golfe… Et après ? (1992). His other works include Les beaux jours de Chahrazade (1982), Je(u) au passé and Les sept portes de la nuit (1994), Casablanca by Night (2003), and Casablanca Daylight (2004). With 11 films to his name, he remains one of the most prolific Moroccan filmmakers of the 1980s and 1990s.