ACHOURA

Ashura is a commemoration during Muharram (the first month in the Islamic calendar) which originally coincided with the beginning of a holy armistice. Peace also reigns at the beginning of this story. Somewhere in the Moroccan countryside, four children scare the living daylights out of each other, just for fun of course. In a house that is rumored to be the dwelling place of ghosts, one of them mysteriously disappears. A quarter-century later, the three remaining friends bump into their long-lost playmate. His reappearance coincides with a series of child kidnappings. Would he by any chance have something to do with that? ACHOURA is the second full-length film by French-Moroccan director Talal Selhami. With his first feature, MIRAGES, he won the special jury prize at the 2011 BIFFF. Dissatisfied with the lack of genre movies in the land of his forebears, he vowed to make the first Moroccan creature feature. Think werewolves, vampires, golems, ghouls, and other Godzillas… The result is this North African chiller, shot entirely by night. Spine-chilling or what?