Mohamed Laghzaoui: From Bus-Owner to Venice-Awarded Filmmaker in Colonial Morocco

With a silver medal from the 1948 Venice Film Festival hanging in a dusty archive, Mohamed Laghzaoui’s name is barely remembered in Morocco’s cultural history, even though his early ventures laid the groundwork for the nation’s first indigenous film industry.

Before the mid‑1930s, Moroccan cinema was dominated by European operators. French and American titles filled purpose‑built theatres that echoed French architectural motifs, while only a handful of modest “indigenous” cinemas dotted the medinas of Casablanca, Rabat and Marrakesh. The war years shifted the tide: radio broadcasts of Oum Kalthoum and Abdel Wahab, coupled with the screening of Egyptian movies, ignited a hunger for Arabic‑language cinema among Moroccans. In 1944 the colonial administration created the Film Service and the Moroccan Film Center (CCM) to regulate the market and produce content for French audiences.

Laghzaoui’s entry into cinema coincided with a surge in nationalist sentiment. In 1947 he founded Royale Sodifilm, a distributor of Egyptian titles, and Studio Maghreb, a production house. That same year, Sultan Mohammed Ben Youssef delivered a speech in Tangier calling for full Moroccan rights; the footage was captured by Chérif‑Film, censored, and eventually banned. Studio Maghreb secured the rights in 1948, produced two copies, and secretly screened one to nationalist circles, exposing colonial censorship limits and underscoring the need for a Moroccan voice behind the camera.

The nationalist wave also sparked a boycott of European‑run cinemas in the major cities. In 1948, Laghzaoui led a consortium that purchased the Boujloud cinema in Fez, the largest indigenous theatre in Morocco and a symbol of cultural resistance. Colonial authorities delayed the necessary licence and imposed safety inspections, but Laghzaoui’s legal team prevailed. The cinema reopened on Eid al‑Fitr, 6 August 1948, restoring a key venue for Moroccan audiences.

Studio Maghreb’s flagship project, Les Noces de sable (The Sand Wedding), followed that same year. Directed by André Zwobada and shot in the High Atlas, the film assembled a multicultural cast: Tunisian actor Larbi Tounsi, Moroccan actress Itto Bent Lahcen, and Algerian actor Himoud Brahimi. Its narrative, drawn from a Moroccan legend, relied on minimal dialogue and a voice‑over that could be adapted for various markets; Jean Cocteau, impressed by the footage, supplied the narration.

The film earned a place on Morocco’s roster for the 46th Venice Film Festival in 1948 and won the Premio della Direzione Generale, a medal the French press described as the “Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Council.” The award thrust Laghzaoui and Studio Maghreb into international visibility and prompted the colonial administration to negotiate a memorandum of understanding on 26 October 1948 with French producer Guérin and the National Bank for Commerce and Industry.

Despite the Venice triumph, Les Noces de sable never achieved widespread distribution. It played for only a few weeks in Paris and once in Morocco, in 1951, at the Cinéma Royal in Rabat. Laghzaoui later alleged that colonial authorities sabotaged the film for political reasons. The film remains absent from the Moroccan Film Archive’s catalog and was not returned to Morocco in the early 2025 repatriation of colonial film assets.

Today, Laghzaoui’s cinematic endeavors are largely forgotten, yet they constitute one of the earliest attempts to establish an indigenous Moroccan film industry and to use cinema as a vehicle for nationalist expression. The reopening of Boujloud and the Venice award for Les Noces de sable demonstrate how Moroccan entrepreneurs navigated colonial censorship and sought to forge a national cultural identity through film.

Laghzaoui’s legacy continues to resonate in contemporary debates about the development of a Moroccan film industry and the role of cinema in nation‑building. His story underscores the importance of preserving early Moroccan film history and recognizing the contributions of figures who operated outside the mainstream narrative of the country’s cultural evolution.