Queens

Yasmine Benkiran
France - Morocco - Belgium - Netherlands - Qatar

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.

Fiction
1st feature
Director of photography

Pierre Aïm

Editor

Stéphan Couturier, Yann Malcor

Music Composer

Jozef van Wissem

Main Cast

Nisrin Erradi, Nisrine Benchara, Rayhan Guaran

Production

Petit Film (France)
Amélie Jacquis, Jean des Forêts
amelie@petit-film.com

Co-production

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

International Sales

Kinology (France)
Grégoire Melin
gmelin@kinology.eu

Distributor

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
Yasmine Benkiran
Director, Screenwriter

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).

Amélie Jacquis
Amélie Jacquis
Producer

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).

Total budget

€2 100 000

Financing secured

€1 984 000

Partners attached

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

Shooting period and locations

October – November 2021 – Casablanca, Sidi Ifni, Trafaout, Aglou, Morocco

Expected delivery

Late Spring 2022

Stage of post-production

Shooting wraps on November 6 2021

Looking for

Gap financing  

Other Films in production or post-production