Moroccan Film Selected For 2009 Academy Awards

Moroccan Film Selected For 2009 Academy Awards
(Morocco)- A Moroccan film, "Adieu Mères (Goodbye Mothers)" directed by Mohamed Ismail, has been selected for the 2009 Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Released in February 2008, "Adieu Mères" was selected by a commission at the Moroccan Cinema Centre (CCM) because it met the requirements of the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (Oscars) award. The film highlights religious tolerance in Morocco through a "highly symbolical" story of Muslim and Jewish families bound for years by brotherhood and love in a universal dimension. Critics say the feature film is a message for peace, despite the ideological friction and the religious splits in it. The Moroccan film industry has been enjoying a fresh boom, producing 15 feature films per year. This new uptrend is possible thanks to the government assistance to the seventh art, estimated at $8 million per year. Moroccan filmmakers hope to release 40 feature films annually by 2020 to beef up the country’s current film archives which has 200 features films.
(from apanews.net)