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Watch: A Clip from NYFF Currents Selection “Bouchra”
Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki made Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2020 off their improbably delightful pandemic-set 2 Lizards, a viral web series in which the filmmakers, week by week, transposed the time’s various masking and social distancing rituals into an animal-centric parallel NYC. In our profile, Bennani teased a new work, saying, “There’s something we spontaneously found together in terms of an animation technique and a certain tone that could be developed into another project.”
So, in other words, don’t call the duo’s debut feature, Bouchra, any kind of specific follow-up, even though, again, there are animals (the main characters here coyotes, not reptiles) and a warmly depicted NYC, this time mostly set within queer communities. The animation technique is next-level, with a sense of delight in every frame, while the narrative is a more personal one, involving a filmmaking coyote and her attempts to connect with her Morocco-based mother for a film exploring the silences within their relationship. Watch a clip for Bouchra, which is receiving its American premiere at the New York Film Festival, above.
