Qirat is loosely based around an oral family anecdote of a robbery that took place in the lush valley of Fez in northern Morocco during the 1980s. In the film, the events have been transposed to Ouarzazate, located on the edge of the Sahara Desert in central Morocco. Here the anecdote is reconstructed freely, over the course of a single Friday, shot solely during dawn, dusk and finally night.
Akin to the storytelling tradition of the Al-Halqa, which weaves together the fantastic and factual, the anecdote acts as a compass through Ouarzazate’s life and its history. From the Atlas Mountains into the city center, the anecdote connects the place’s history as a former film mecca for Hollywood, to its present as home to one of the world’s largest solar power plants.
Biography
Amin Zouiten (born 1994) is a Swedish-Moroccan artist and filmmaker who obtained his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Malmö Art Academy in 2023.
His works and films have been exhibited and screened at Malmö Konsthall, Gothenburg Film Festival, Skåne Art Association, Rencontres Paris/Berlin, ISSUES, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, CPH:DOX, and Tempo Documentary Festival.
In 2024, he was the recipient of the Cultural Award of the City of Stockholm and the Bernadotte Scholarship, awarded with an upcoming solo presentation at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Beyond his own artistic practice, he has served as an assistant editor for filmmaker C.W. Winter and as a visiting tutor at Malmö Art Academy and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
