Bouchra

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels

Bouchra, the feature animated film by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, is part of Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels. On this occasion, the artist will be in conversation with her long-time collaborator, musician Flavien Berger, at Cinema Galeries this Saturday, May 16.

“Bouchra is a jackal living in New York, where she works as a filmmaker. She navigates a life involving an ex-girlfriend, her parents and aunts in Casablanca, and the unexpected pull of a new fling with a bear. As she works on a film, Bouchra returns to the tender fault line between herself and her mother, Aicha, a cardiologist whose steady love is bruised by the silence that followed Bouchra’s coming out.

This semi-autobiographical story is a marvel, written by visual artist Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki and Ayla Mrabet. The film is based on conversations Bennani recorded with her family and friends in Morocco. Voices captured in cars, kitchens, and on phone calls are recreated by animated creatures whose softness allows difficult truths to slip through.

In Barki and Bennani’s unique aesthetic, the playful world of animal-like characters mingles with documentary honesty. Fiction becomes a journey toward maternal recognition and the search for a language of queerness; daughterhood a negotiation between duty and desire; storytelling a fragile attempt to repair what distance has frayed. In one of the most remarkable moving-image works of 2025, Bouchra opens a luminous space where a family cautiously begins to speak again.”

Screenings will take place on 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 May at Cinema Galeries.

Link to the website