This screening is sold out. We will start an in-person waitlist one hour before the screening in case we are able to release last-minute tickets.
Two new films from African you can’t see anywhere else.
VTIFF is committed to bringing the best international films to Vermont, and sometimes that means bringing in films that don’t have an American distributor, which means they can’t be streamed or seen anywhere else… only at VTIFF. These two films fit that bill.
A character study, a social drama, a musical, a tale of overcoming obstacles… Everybody Loves Touda packs a lot into its running time.
In the latest film from Nabil Ayouch (Horses of God), co-written with his wife, director Maryam Touzani (The Blue Caftan), Touda dreams of being a sheikha, or traditional Moroccan folk singer. A single mother with a young son, her opportunities are limited and fraught with risk—as the harrowing and violent conclusion to the film’s opening scene makes clear—so she sets her sights on Casablanca. Leaving her son with her parents, she sets about to master the aita, a Moroccan musical genre rooted in poetry about the many struggles of life, from the personal to the political. But in a culture where female performers are as often eroticized and stigmatized as venerated, what does it really mean to succeed?
Touda features several astonishing musical performances, but also shows us the not-so-glamorous goings-on behind the scenes, especially for Touda as a woman in a very macho world.
As Touda, Nisrin Erradi’s incendiary performance fuels the film. Not a singer by trade, she trained with professional Sheikhats for a year, learning voice, dance, and percussion. She turned down several roles during her preparation because she wanted nothing to interfere with her performance. Whatever she did, it was the right choice. She—and Touda—are magnificent.