Fatine, a 17-year-old girl, lives with her mother Nadia – a singer and dancer of Aïta, a popular Moroccan music – in Azemmour, Morocco. She has just passed her graduation exams and faces an important life choice: either to commit to her family’s artistic tradition or to choose a comfortable life with a boyfriend who despises her cultural background.

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A film by a duo of a Moroccan artistic couple who also form a relationship in their private lives. The 25-minute feature looks at an important stage in the life of a seventeen-year-old who can either follow her mother’s passion for dance and profession or her own path, independent from her family. A dilemma particularly often addressed by Arab cinema, which tries to do justice to tradition and modernity, as well as to both sexes, whose unequal social position is sometimes contested ever more boldly by the art there. It is fitting, then, that in this film full of dancing, singing and music, both rationales are partly the result of a partnership between the director and the filmmaker.

This film is a part of “Rhythm of change. Short films” set.