Los Angeles Filmforum & Film Movement co-presents Bouchra, the acclaimed feature debut by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, on Saturday, July 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the Laemmle Glendale (207 N. Maryland Ave., Glendale). Blending animation, memoir, and documentary, the film follows a queer Moroccan artist navigating family, identity, and artistic creation between New York and Casablanca.
I'll be introducing the screening on behalf of LA Filmforum. See you there!
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Part memoir, part animated fantasia, Bouchra follows a queer Moroccan artist in New York whose stalled film project is transformed by difficult conversations with her mother in Casablanca. As she navigates creative uncertainty, cultural displacement, and new romantic relationships, the boundaries between art and life begin to dissolve. Inspired With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, Bouchra, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki (best known together from their 2020 web series “2 Lizards”), is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art and resonant family drama. Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy and formally adventurous, Bennani and Barki’s distinctive debut forges new ground that “will make it a classic of queer cinema for years to come” (Next Best Picture)."“
July 10-16, 2026
At the Laemmle Glendale, 207 N. Maryland Ave. Glendale
The film plays 3 times daily (12:50 pm, 5:15 pm, 7:30 pm)
”Wrestling with writer’s block for her first film, Bouchra, a queer Moroccan jackal living in NYC, starts having difficult yet overdue phone calls with her mother in Casablanca that begin influencing the project. Balancing the precarity of working as an artist in New York, the rift in her identity between her two homes and an array of friendships and romantic interests, Bouchra’s emotional reckoning with her mother and herself becomes her path to expression.
I’m a big fan of these filmmakers and artists. Their 2 Lizards series became a favorite of mine during the pandemic and the image of the dancing lizards is on heavy rotation in my brain. We, me and my 24memespersecond co-moderators, included the first episode in our 2025 program at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, Touch Frame.
Originally debuted in serialized form on Bennani’s Instagram account during the 2020 Covid pandemic, the 2 Lizards series was amongst the first animated reflections of this new reality. Stuck indoors consuming content and potential misinformation, Episode 1 introduces our lizard protagonists reflecting on their isolation at home. The world is slightly unmoored, mattes slides and pops into the microphone are recorded for the final product. The techniques reflect the attitude at the time, yearning for physical tangibility in a digital world, complete with VHS style lateral lickings across the screen.
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