Ali Essafi visited Bouanani three years before the latter’s death. The filmmaker, poet and novelist who also made drawings was leading a reclusive life in a remote village with his wife Naïma and many cats, living in the midst of huge piles of books and manuscripts.
In this Sufi tale, Nadia, a young Moroccan emigre returns from Paris to Fez to visit her dying father. At his funeral, she is overcome by the voice of Karina chanting the Koran. A powerful friendship develops between the two women as they decide to turn the father's palace into a shelter for Muslim women.
Ahmed Bouanani (Casablanca, 16 November 1938 - Demnate, 6 February 2011) was a Moroccan film director, poet and novelist. He was best known from the 1979 film The Mirage, which featured as no.61 on the list of the best and most important 100 Arabic films commissioned by the 10th Dubai International Film Festival in 2013. In 1983 he also made a comic strip for the newspaper Al Maghrib. In addition to filmmaking, Bouanini wrote three collections of poetry and one novel, The Hospital, translated into English by Lara Vergnaud and published by New Directions in 2018.
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