ATLANTIC MIRAGE

Hakim Mao

Morocco - France

Synopsis

Late summer in Agadir. Younès and Ismaïl, inseparable since childhood, work at the Atlantic Mirage Hotel and sell their charms to tourists. They put money aside, feeding their hope of one day leaving. But one morning, Ismaïl vanishes. While strange phenomena torment the ocean, Younès sets out to solve the mystery of his friend’s disappearance.

Fiction

1^st feature

Production

Furyo Films (France)
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Emma Binet
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Charles Merresse
_{charles@furyofilms.com}

Director’s statement

Atlantic Mirage is a fantastical thriller; a venomous, crepuscular investigation seen through the gaze of Younès, a young man at a loss after the disappearance of his best friend Ismaïl. The action takes place in Agadir, where I grew up. This seaside town has always struck me as a strange place, as it crystallizes the powerful tension between the carefree attitude of tourists and the lives of those working in the background of their holidays. I wanted to capture this specific cosmopolitan atmosphere and its porosity, and bring out the ambivalence of human relationships woven between these two worlds. The Atlantic Ocean, at once an open horizon and an impassable border, coincides with this friction and helps bring out the fantastic, thus creating a fictional space conducive to blurring the lines of genre cinema.

Biographies

Hakim Mao

Director

Hakim Mao was born and grew up in Agadir, Morocco. He studied editing before graduating from cinema studies at the École Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière. Since 2014, he has been working as a script consultant with Initiative Film, a company that specializes in international development consultancy, as well as a scriptwriter on projects in development. He has directed the short films Fragile (2020) and Idiot Fish (2022), the latter of which is still circulating in festivals and can be seen on Arte. Mao is currently developing his first feature-length film, Atlantic Mirage.

Emma Binet

Producer

Furyo Films is an independent production company founded in 2020 by Emma Binet, Charles Merresse, and Adrien Barrouillet. The company produces short and feature-length films, and helps bring to life the subtle outlook of talented filmmakers on current societal themes, in any format, any genre, and from any country. Furyo cares for the international dimension of its films, so works closely with European and international partners.