Screening of Bouchra (2024, Arabic/French/English) by Orian Barki and Meriem Benenni, curated by Alia Ardon through TDTF Youth Programming.
Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki’s latest award-winning feature film Bouchra submerges audiences into a meta-fictive story which follows a queer Moroccan filmmaker living in New York City and her mother Aicha, an orthodontist living in Casablanca. The twist? They are animated animals. Through a distinct blend of voice-note dialogue and Wong Kar Wai-esque 3D computer animation, the story follows Bouchra as she pieces a film together to understand her mother following the 9 years of silence their relationship endured after she came out. Following two sold-out runs at the 33rd Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival, Gadigal-based filmmaker and film curator Alia Ardon is bringing Bouchra to Sydney's beloved Fairfield in the spirit of empathetic inter-generational mediation and dialogue.
Bouchra is unclassified 18+.
Alia Ardon is an emerging filmmaker and researcher with a deep interest in the plurality of historical narratives and the socio-political tools that shape them over time.
Among her notable works are her collaboration as a co-director on the film 'Border Farce' (2023) with Safdar Ahmed, commissioned by documenta-fifteen. Her current project ‘Kalitus' investigates the 20th-century industrialisation of gum trees in Morocco, and their journey there from so-called Australia. Born at the Bouanani Archives in Rabat, the film in development was awarded first prize at the USU Creative Awards 2024, and her Honours thesis on the topic was awarded the University Medal at the University of Sydney in 2025.
Most recently, as a member of the Gadigal-based Liberation Cinema collective, she was selected for the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Critics Campus program for emerging filmmakers and critics. She is the founder and curator of the forthcoming Cinema Dyalna cinema program with Think+Do Tank in Fairfield. In her spare time, she curates a weekly film club in her living room.
Her work has been curated, shown, or commissioned by e-flux (New York City), MONAFOMA (Launceston), documenta-fifteen (Kassel), Think Tanger (Tanger), ZargaLab Ramadan Screenings (Marrakech), the Prague Quadrennial (Prague), and the State Library of NSW, Verge Gallery, Firstdraft, PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, UTP, Chau Chak Wing Museum, and the SWANA Film Festival on Gadi Country, among others.
Cinema Dyalna is an initiative of Think+DO Tank Foundation to bring cinema around the world, through women’s eyes, and in the languages spoken by the communities around us in South Western Sydney. It is curated by Alia Ardon.
Funding for this project has been provided by the NSW Government through Multicultural NSW.