Projects in development
Eldorado
Synopsis
A group of migrants seeks to reach Eldorado, a secret utopian island where everyone lives in peace – and eventually ends up in a factory of the same name that produces tomato sauce.
Le Moindre Geste (Morocco)
Francesca Duca
fra.duca@gmail.com
Director’s statement
As a theme, credulity has interested me since I was making my first short films. When a person believes in something, their actions are imbued with sincerity and devotion. This means that someone who can make another believe in something can put them at their service. We live in an era when nothing makes sense – neither geography nor the rule of law nor history. We have lost all our reference points. This is a period that is conducive to manipulation. Capital has already made productive use of children, migrants and prisoners... but with each repeat, it wants more for less. It's in the operating system; things cannot be otherwise. How do you ensure workers with low pay and no rights remain docile? The answer is simple. Sell them a dream. And we have been sold many, many dreams in the past.
Biographies
Alaa Eddine Aljem was born in Rabat in 1988, and studied cinema at EsavM and at Insas in Brussels. He has directed and produced several films that have been selected for numerous festivals around the world. In 2016, Aljem was named one of the five Arab Stars of Tomorrow by Screen International. In 2017, he was chosen as one of Film Independent’s Global Mediamakers. In 2019, he directed and produced The Unknown Saint, which had its world premiere in La Semaine de la Critique section at the Festival de Cannes.
Francesca Duca was born in Assisi, Italy, in 1981, studied Literature and Visual Anthropology at the Università degli Studi di Perugia in Italy and at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. After conducting field research in India, she wrote “The Construction of a Pan-Indian Imaginary Through Bollywood Cinema," a thesis on the Bollywood phenomenon. She has attended workshops including Ettore Scola's workshop in Rome and Cinematic and Literary Traditions of Liberty at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has a Master’s degree in Directing and Production from INSAS. In 2012, Duca moved to Marrakech, where she co-founded Le Moindre Geste, a production company that focuses on the promotion of auteur cinema in Morocco. In 2014, she launched Images du Sud, a production company dedicated to creative documentaries.
€2 500 000
2022, Morocco, Italy, France
May 2023
Broadcasters, co-producers, distributors, funds, sales agents
