Bouchra, a 35-year-old queer Moroccan coyote living in NYC, is wrestling with writer’s block. Whilst finishing the script for her autobiographical film Bouchra has a phone call with her mother in Casablanca. Their tender yet complex exchange leads to memories resurfacing and sparks a creative breakthrough, opening a journey through family bonds, unreconciled conflicts and the thrills of love and romance.
This screening will be followed by a discussion curated by NAFS نَفْس, a London-based platform curating exhibitions, events, and workshops celebrating Queer SWANA (South West Asia & North Africa) creatives.
Moderator
Heidi El-Kholy is an Egyptian writer and creative, channeling anger at the fuckery of geopolitics into workshops that span art, food, poetry, film, and simply existing for the community. She loves cultivating and collaborating on cool shit and is one half of Salt and Sister Studio, with her sister (duh). She works on branding and creative with organisations and individuals who are politically and ethically aligned. Loves reality TV and talking about how time and frizz are colonial concepts.
Panellists
Rahim El Habachi is a Moroccan born, London based theatre maker, actor, writer, performer and creative producer. His work explores queer identity, migration, masculinity, belonging and the relationship between personal stories and wider political histories.
He is he founder and Artistic Director of HOMNA, a collective creating space for queer SWANA artists through theatre, cabaret and community events.
Rahim’s performance and writing credits include work with Welsh National Opera, Sherman Theatre, Wales Millennium Centre, Fio and Glitter Cymru. His projects include The Love Thief, a solo performance combining theatre, mythology and belly dance; Touch, a short film exploring love, assimilation and cultural erasure; and Tanger, a play examining queerness, colonialism and power in 1950s Tangier.
Alongside his artistic practice, Rahim has extensive experience in community organising, advocacy, event production and public speaking. He is passionate about creating bold, accessible work that centres voices often excluded from mainstream stages and screens.
Mahdi Marvdashti’s interest in animation started young, family friend who taught him the basics, and that stuck with him. He later trained more formally in animation, drawn especially to what he thinks of as subliminal narrative, the way a story can carry meaning underneath the plot, in the small choices of image and symbol.
That's shaped how he thinks about storytelling more generally, and why narrative accuracy matters to him, not getting swept up in what a story could be, but paying attention to what it actually is, who it belongs to, and what might get lost in the telling. He later studied sociology, which gave him more language for thinking about culture and representation.
They currently work in community organising at NAFS, a London-based organisation rooted in the Queer SWANA diaspora, where these questions still come up in their day to day work.
They're glad to be part of this conversation, and mostly curious to hear how others in the room think about telling these stories well.