The filmmaker is working on the scripts of both "Casa Girls" and her next feature, inspired by a New York Times investigative article titled Workers in "Spain’s Strawberry Fields Speak Out on Abuse".
Paris-based Moroccan filmmaker Laila Marrakchi is developing two female-driven projects. One of the projects titled Casa Girls is a series about four single women in their 20s living in Casablanca, and the other is a drama based on a real-life sex scandal set against Spain’s agricultural backdrop.
The drama film, currently being developed with Estrella Productions, will explore the story of under-privileged Moroccan women who travelled to Spain to harvest strawberries and were sexually abused, leading them to rebel and file a class action.
The drama-comedy series will follow Kenzo, a young woman who had been living in Paris for 10 years and returns to her homeland in Casablanca where she becomes friends with other women from different backgrounds.
Commenting on the series, Marrakchi, who is attending the Marrakech Film Festival and is part of the jury of the Atlas industry meetings, said: “Although the girls all come from different horizons, they go through similar struggles with love, intimacy issues and difficulty to find their sense of selves and womanhood in a society that seems schizophrenic at times.”
Besides these projects, Marrakchi is also in the process of raising financing for My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, an English-language project based on Annabel Pitcher’s novel about a boy whose sister was killed in a terrorist attack in London and has been raised by his Islamophobic father.
Marrakchi was born and raised in Morocco and has been living in Paris for many years.
