Queens
Synopsis
Casablanca, Morocco.
A trio of women with the police on their tail embarks on a long escape that takes them across the rugged red terrain and flower-filled valleys of the Atlas to finally reach the Atlantic coast.
Pierre Aïm
Stéphan Couturier, Yann Malcor
Jozef van Wissem
Nisrin Erradi, Nisrine Benchara, Rayhan Guaran
Petit Film (France)
Amélie Jacquis, Jean des Forêts
amelie@petit-film.com
Mont Fleuri Productions (Morocco)
Saïd Hamich
Need Productions (Belgium)
Géraldine Sprimont, Anne-Laure Guégan
Key Films (Netherlands)
Hanneke Niens
Deuxième Ligne Films (France)
Marie Dubas
Kinology (France)
Grégoire Melin
gmelin@kinology.eu
Tandem (France)
Mathieu Robinet
bonjour@tandemfilms.fr
Director’s statement
Queens questions various woman figures of this yet unresolved era. Asma is facing a choice: remain a quietly obedient virginal effigy, or emancipate yourself at the cost of attracting scorn and disgrace? An urgent, spontaneous choice that will push her over the brink.
Freedom comes at a cost: it will turn Asma into outlaw.
Biographies
Yasmine Benkiran is a Moroccan-French director and screenwriter. Having grown up in Rabat on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, she moved to Paris at the age of 18 to study philosophy and communication. With professional experience in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Paris and London, she joined La Fémis (screenplay workshop) and obtained her title as screenwriter. As a screenwriter, Yasmine writes for both television and cinema. She is the author of two books on Morocco and a series of podcasts on Alice Guy, the first female director in history. Benkiran is also a script consultant on numerous films. She directed the short film Winter Time in 2018 (Tangier IFF, Off-courts Trouville). Her first feature film, Queens, a feminist truckdriver road film, made its world premiere in September 2022 at the Venice Film Festival as closing film at the Settimana Internazionale della Critica (SIC).
Petit Film produces and co-produces French and foreign films. The choices, based on perfectly subjective criteria, gradually constitute a genre-agnostic and eclectic catalogue.
Among its recent titles: Earwig by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (2022), The Family by Fabien Gorgeart (2022), The Girl with a Bracelet by Stéphane Demoustier (2020), Diane Has the Right Shape by Fabien Gorgeart (2017), Raw by Julia Ducournau (2017).
€2 100 000
€1 984 000
CCM, Eurimages, TaxShelter.be, Netherlands Filmfonds, CNC Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, Normandie Images, Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, Kinology, Screen.Brussels, DGD, Doha Film Institute, Proximus, Be TV, Media Creative Europe, AFAC, Angoa, September Films
October – November 2021 – Casablanca, Sidi Ifni, Trafaout, Aglou, Morocco
Late Spring 2022
Shooting wraps on November 6 2021
Gap financing