FICAM: Africa & the Middle East's First Animated Film Festival

This Friday marks the opening night of the 11th edition of FICAM, the International Animated Film Festival of Meknes -- the first film festival in Africa and the Middle East dedicated entirely to animation in Africa*.


Last year's clip

It's hosted by the French Institute of Meknes and projections, lectures and events take place in several locations --including an old caravanserai in the medina -- throughout the Ismailian capital. 

Previous festivals have hosted great names of international animation like Michel Ocelot (Kirikou, Azur & Asmar) and the beloved Hayao Miyazaki (Totoro, Ponyo) This year's theme focuses on the  creators of the Russian school of animation, including Konstantin Bronzit (At the Ends of the Earth):

"Le cinéma d'animation russe, comme le démontre la programmation de cette année - qui ne se veut en aucun cas exhaustive vue son immensité- a pour modeste ambition de démontrer la diversité du cinéma d’animation qui puise sa force dans son patrimoine oral, littéraire et culturel, tout en étant contemporain, novateur, inventeur de formes."

The Russian animated film school, as this year's program demonstrates -- without intending in any way to be exhaustive, considering its immensity-- holds the modest ambition to demonstrate the diversity of an animated cinema that draws its force from its oral, literary and cultural heritage, all the while remaining contemporary, innovative, and inventing new forms."

The festival also supports a pedagogical initiative through its master class workshops for Moroccan film students -- and the great desire to inspire creativity and curiosity in Moroccan children and families through the joy and magic of animation.




*There's also the Animafrik Festival in Ghana.