Bouchra


Bouchra, originally titled For Aicha, is a 2024 Italian-Moroccan-American adult computer-animated arthouse drama film directed, written by, and starring Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki. Commissioned by Milan's Fondazione Prada and animated on the Blender platform, it is the first animated feature produced in Morocco and the first film directed by Bennani and Barki. Bennani voices the titular character—a queer Moroccan canid in Brooklyn, New York City—in a semi-autobiographical account which chronicles her personal and sexual exploration amid a series of telephone calls with her Casablanca mother.
The film is set in the same universe as 2 Lizards, a web series helmed by Bennani and Barki during the COVID-19 pandemic. Production lasted for two years as part of an art exhibition Bennani created for Prada's hometown facility, and involved nearly 20 crew members in New York. Live-action footage was used for the backgrounds, while Bouchra and Aicha's on-screen conversations—added in the later stages of production—were based on Bennani's actual recordings. Several other members of the 2 Lizards team returned for the follow-up, among them composer Flavien Berger. Amid creative struggles and script rewrites, Bennani sought to conceive a story that would resonate with both Western and Middle Eastern audiences.
Bouchra debuted at the Prada premises under its original name, For Aicha, on 31 October 2024. Through a retitled and re-edited version, the film made its festival debut in Toronto and New York's 2025 editions, marking Bennani's first appearance at those venues in three years. It became the first animated work nominated for Toronto's Platform Prize, an honour that Ukrainian live-action candidate To the Victory! ultimately won. A month afterward, it received the Gold Q-Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival's LGBTQ+-oriented OutLook program. A U.S. release by Film Movement is slated for 2026, via international sales company Lucky Number.
Critics positively reviewed Bouchra, with many of them commenting on its cultural and LGBTQ+ themes, psychological motifs, blending of reality and filmed fiction, and its styles of animation and narrative. Several compared it to Disney's 2016 feature Zootopia and the works of Richard Linklater, but criticized the quality of the CGI and noted that the metafictional structure might be difficult to follow. The film was met with enthusiasm across its festival screenings and gained popularity with the furry userbase of the Letterboxd site.

Synopsis

Bouchra, a 35-year-old queer Moroccan canid, works as a filmmaker in Brooklyn, New York City; her mother, Aicha, lives in Casablanca. After a period of creative drought, Bouchra embarks on a journey of exploring herself and her sexual identity during her work on a semi-autobiographical film set in Morocco, where her character has an affair with another woman and deals with her relatives. Willing to move on with her career, she also yearns for reconciliation with Aicha through a series of telephone calls; this follows up on a coming-out letter she wrote to her parents nine years prior. The storyline involves real and fictional versions of both characters; according to Jace Clayton of 4Columns, "metafictional elements get conveyed via text messages, video calls, visual and sonic puns, a play-within-a-film young animals dress up as vegetables for their school performance, pen-and-ink storyboarding of the scene being shown, and more." In the closing scenes, Bouchra and her mother finally meet at a dinner table, accompanied by their relatives; she breaks her silence by explaining what her production deals with. This leads the former's aunt, Yamna, to quip that "I am with my best family."

Voice cast

  • Meriem Bennani as Bouchra, a canid who works as a filmmaker in Brooklyn and doubles as her voice actor's "alter-ego"; her fictional counterpart is voiced by Fatim-Zahra Alami. She converses with her Moroccan friends and relatives in Arabic and French, while also using English as a New Yorker. In contrast with her real-life counterparts' carnivorous nature, she is highly vulnerable in trait. Thanks to her asthma symptoms, she resorts to shots of Ventolin to cope. Bouchra shares her name with Bennani's real aunt, whom Yamna—a middle-aged and single Moroccan—substitutes in-universe.
  • Yto Barrada as Aicha, a cardiologist in Casablanca. She stands in for Bennani's real mother, whom Barrada dubbed over. The Aicha in Bouchra's universe is a painter and sculptor, voiced by Dounia Berrada.
  • Orian Barki as Yani, a Brooklyn lizard. Yani was formerly one of the unnamed titular characters in Bennani and Barki's web series 2 Lizards.
  • Salima Dhaibi as Lamia, a Moroccan bear whom Bouchra gradually falls in love with.
  • Ariana Faye Allensworth as Nikki, a cow who is Bouchra's ex-girlfriend and proposes a job for her. Allensworth had previously voiced an impala in 2 Lizards.

    Production

Background and funding

Bouchra is the first animated feature film to be produced in Morocco, and is also the directorial debut for its creators, Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki. Based in New York City, Bennani and Barki respectively hailed from Rabat, Morocco and Tel Aviv, Israel. The film is set in the same universe as 2 Lizards, an eight-episode web series the creator duo previously helmed during the COVID-19 pandemic; their production company was later named after it. Both enjoyed working together on the series, and wished to do something longer. After the Fondazione Prada of Milan gave her an offer to develop an exhibition, Bennani insisted that a feature film be included in the deal.
Prada would fund Bennani's film as part of the resulting showcase, For My Best Family. Family, which also featured a mechanical installation named Sole Crushing, was made over a two-year period and was "her first solo exhibition in an Italian institution." In Prada's promotion, Bennani discussed the two components thus:

Writing

Bouchra is a semi-autobiographical account of the life of Bennani, who voices the titular character; the phone calls depicted in the scenes were based on recordings of the actual French-language conversations, which also served as research resources and arrived in the later stages of production. Bennani endured creative difficulties during the making of the project, particularly as she struggled to conceive a story that would ideally appeal to both Western and Middle Eastern audiences. As she summarised during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival screenings, Bouchra constituted "the story of us making the film. Struggling to make the film. And me calling my mom."
The film bore the working title of Good News early in development; Good News was a translation of "", the name of Bennani's real aunt. During production, it was renamed For Aicha and underwent constant script rewrites. The original version focused on Bouchra's trip back home to Morocco, but was scrapped when Bennani and Barki ran into plot issues amid both their lack of writing experience and attempts to avoid clichéd Westernised views of the LGBTQ+ experience. An unsuccessful rewrite implored them to work more of the mother's point of view into the plot; the phone calls that followed provided Bennani with a story that surpassed the crew's previous attempts and inspired them to add a metafictional aspect to the script. Bennani was given permission by her mother to use the recordings and became an interpreter for their playback. Half of the film's dialogue is in English and the remainder in French and Arabic.
Depending on the source, the titular character has been described as a jackal or coyote. In 2024, Bennani told the Italian Architectural Digest that she made Bouchra a jackal due to the predominance of this species across North Africa. At a Toronto Q&A session, Barki offered a different story: While the crew honoured Bennani's choice at first, they soon settled for a coyote instead, which "ended up impacting the personality of the character. As Barki said at TIFF, Bouchra is very 'contained, well-behaved, she wants to fit into her worlds. But the coyote is a wild animal, with potential to get angry.' Barki wanted Bouchra's presence to 'hold that energy'." Bennani also modelled many of the other characters after her real relatives.

Animation and music

Aided by the Blender animation software, a New York City crew of almost 20 members worked on Aicha under a 1-year deadline and budget. Utilising the same blend of documentary and animation previously showcased in 2 Lizards became "a major challenge for the team." This involved different production methods for different scenes and improvisations that made the style comparable to higher-budgeted works.
Bennani and Barki took visual cues from Chungking Express, Mulholland Drive, and the works of Pedro Almodóvar. The "low-lit metropolitan" skylines of Casablanca and Brooklyn were shot in live action, then processed in CGI; the interior sets were fully computer-animated. Thanks to the Fondazione Prada's involvement, the animators used clothing designs from its sister firm, Prada, for some of the characters' wardrobe. Other outfits were based on what the real-life actors wore. Becky Akinyode, who once played a leopard in 2 Lizards, returned as the CGI stylist for Bennani's character. Cinematographer John Michael Boling, who "came out of semi-retirement" for Aicha, occasionally acted out the character animation in motion capture suits along with Bennani.
The first of two sex scenes made for the film was set in Morocco, and became the second shown in story order; for the other one, two friends of the creators acted in reference footage. While making those scenes, the creator duo tackled the portrayal of kisses between animal characters who sported "long muzzles".
For Aicha composer, Flavien Berger, was a close friend of Bennani's who had previously scored three episodes of 2 Lizards. His score, influenced by Berber customs, was based on his initial perception of the characters, and would eventually bring Who Framed Roger Rabbit to mind for Bennani and Barki. The work of guest musician Reda Senhaji, who performs as Cheb Runner, is heard during the film's Casablanca radio broadcasts as well as in Sole Crushing.