Akal

Directed by Basma Rkioui

“I am a former alpine skiing champion from Morocco. In my father's library, I came upon some old VHS tapes in which I see myself as a child, putting on my first pair of skis in the snow-covered mountains of the High Atlas, a few kilometers from my hometown of Marrakech. Driven by these memories, I return to the mountains, where there is no snow on the peaks and the abandoned ski lifts creak in the wind against the backdrop of a vast landscape. I then discovered that the resort where I learned to ski was a pasture where shepherds from neighboring villages brought their flocks in summer. And I wondered: how could a ski resort have been built in a place where skiing once seemed unthinkable?”