Workshop 2

“Storytelling in any culture is part of what provides a connective understanding of the past.”

– Julie Mehretu

TANGIER, MOROCCO, July 2025 – The city stretches out in warm tans and ochres dissolving into deep blue waters. A city within a city, Tangier’s ancient medina is dotted with emerald green grass and towering palms, surrounded by a modern hub of new infrastructure and rapid development. Tangier’s strategic location, situated at the northwesternmost point of the African continent on the Straight of Gibraltar, has made it a gateway between Africa and the rest of the world for thousands of years. Long a home for creative expats, it is the local artistic community that sustains a sense of place and fosters a culture rich in storytelling.

Tangier is the second stop in a series of workshops put on by AFMAC across five African countries: Nigeria, Morocco, Kenya, Senegal and South Africa. Led by a cohort of eight genre-defining artists forming a new artistic collective, and hosted by local partner organizations, the workshops bring local filmmakers and artists together for one week to study and discuss in-depth elements of narrative and experimental cinema and image making. In Tangier, the hub for these workshops was Cinémathèque de Tanger.

North Africa's premier cinema cultural center, Cinémathèque de Tanger is located within the restored 1930s Cinéma Rif building in the city’s Casbah district. A creative beacon and gathering place, it was founded by artist Yto Barrada in 2006 and shows mainstream and art-house cinema along with hosting special programs and running a bustling cafe.

“I thought the place was beautiful and unique, especially its location on the main city square. I’d seen centers of cities disappear and I’d seen them be restored. I thought an art house cinema would be a great way of doing that.”

– Yto Barrada

This cycle of workshops, led by award-winning filmmaker, writer, and director Zeresenay Berhane Merhari, focused on the craft of character development and self-definition in storytelling for the screen. Over the course of a week, participants were in deep dialogue, across languages and generations, reconciling how pieces of their own identity and cultural inheritance show up in the stories they share onscreen.

“Before cinema, stories were kept through oral histories…” says Berhane Merhari. “Inherently, cinema is communal.”