Atlas Close-Ups
Earth and Ashes
Synopsis
When his father Omar, a French architect of Moroccan origin, dies suddenly, 25-year-old Neil finds himself at the center of a family conflict. Neil’s mother, Omar's wife of 25 years, wants to cremate him in order to honor their shared secular values. But Omar's family—his mother, brother, and sister, who have come from the south of France—demand a burial according to Islamic rites. Caught between two conflicting accounts of the man who was his father, Neil is torn. As the funeral stalls, lies accumulate, and the conflict culminates in court, Neil tries to understand who his father was. Earth and Ashes explores grief disrupted by identity tensions in a society that fuels division.
Les Films du Nouveau Monde (France)
Nabil Ayouch
Ali n’ Productions (Morocco)
Amine Benjelloun & Jean-Rémi Ducourtioux
Director’s statement
Earth and Ashes is a drama born of questioning the violent debates that are raging through French society around Islam, secularism, identity, and the place of immigrant children; but also out of a desire to recount these divisions from an intimate perspective—that of a family. What begins as a disagreement over funeral rites becomes a legal and emotional battle in which each defends their own truth about Omar. At the heart of the conflict, Omar’s son Neil vacillates between loyalty and disavowal; between honoring heritage and the desire for emancipation. Yet, from this fracture emerges an unexpected gesture: listening, and a fragile reconciliation between two worlds that are diametrically opposed. I want to film characters torn by contradictions—who love, who suffer, who plan for the future, and who are searching for their place in the world.
Biographies
Leyna Tahiri is a French-Moroccan-Algerian screenwriter. After studying political science at King's College London, she worked in political communications in France and the United States before devoting herself to film and television. In 2022, she joined the Paris-based production company Perpetual Soup as a development executive working with screenwriters David Elkaïm and Vincent Poymiro. Since 2023, she has been collaborating on the writing of feature films and series in Morocco. Tahiri is currently preparing a short film that she will direct in the near future.
Nabil Ayouch, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Académie des César, has directed nine feature films, including Horses of God (2012), which was presented in Un Certain Regard at the Festival de Cannes and received 26 international awards, and Casablanca Beats (2021), which was in the Official Competition at Cannes. He produced Maryam Touzani's The Blue Caftan (2023), which was shortlisted for the Academy Awards and won more than 50 awards. The founder of Ali n' Productions in 1999 and the Ali Zaoua Foundation, Ayouch has created five cultural centers in Morocco to support young talent.
Île-de-France
March 2027
