For greater than a century, international productions have chased Morocco’s light, its chameleon-like geography and its infrastructure — a spot where the Atlas Mountains can stand in for snowcapped worlds, the Sahara can double for the Middle East and historic cities reminiscent of Marrakech and Casablanca slip between eras.
What’s changing — and what the European Film Market spotlights by choosing Morocco as its 2026 Country in Focus — is its coming of age as a creative engine, driven by an increasingly export-minded generation of producers.
“Morocco has established itself as a dynamic bridge between Africa, the Arab world and Europe. Filmmakers reminiscent of Sofia Alaoui, Hicham Lasri, Maryam Touzani and Nabil Ayouch reflect the strength and visibility of up to date Moroccan cinema, including the rising presence of ladies directors,” says Berlinale Pro Director Tanja Meissner. “This mixture of creative momentum, industrial capability and openness to international collaboration makes this the appropriate moment to highlight Morocco and interact in a broader conversation about its role inside global line production.”
For Kasbah Movies founder Karim Debbagh, Morocco’s presence this yr in Berlin is a full-circle moment. “Once I was 19 years old, I met a German filmmaker from Berlin who was scouting for 3 movies that were based on Paul Bowles’ short stories [Frieder Schlaich’s Paul Bowles: Halfmoon],” he says. “That is how I entered the film industry. In 1995, the film premiered in Berlin; I used to be invited, and it won the Critics’ Prize. Now, after 30 years, I’m back in Berlin to present my very own project for the primary time. It means so much to me.”
Debbagh’s arc reads like a case study in Morocco’s current evolution: international training, a decisive return to local storytelling and a realistic relationship with global production dollars. “I went to the German Film Academy in Ludwigsburg and studied film, and afterwards I attempted to make my living in Germany. But then I noticed that I’m not the one who’s going to inform the stories of Germans. I might fairly return to my country, where I discover with my culture and tell our story.”
What he found on returning to Morocco were “very small opportunities for financing movies. That’s why I got into the world of production services,” he says. In 2005, he created Kasbah Movies to support Moroccan and international auteur cinema and to supply executive production services for major foreign productions filmed in Morocco.
“Around 2008 was my first American movie with Dan Myrick, The Objective,” Debbagh says. International TV series and movies reminiscent of The Wheel of Time, Men in Black: International and A Hologram for the King followed. Kasbah Movies’ productions include Moroccan movies reminiscent of The Damned Don’t Cry directed by Fyzal Boulifa, featured within the official choice of the Venice Film Festival in 2022 and the recipient of multiple international prizes; Life Suits Me Well by Al Hadi Ulad Mohand, winner of the grand jury prize on the Tangier National Film Festival in 2022 and chosen for Rotterdam in 2021; and Traitors from Sean Gullette, chosen on the Marrakech and Tribeca film festivals and awarded at several international festivals.
This yr, Debbagh arrives on the Berlinale with projects to pitch, including Everlasting Peace, directed by Boulifa, Looking For Bacchus, directed by Ali Essafi, and Interzone, a series created by Michael Dreher. At Morocco’s Country in Focus programming — including a Producers’ Highlight on Feb. 13 — he and nine other producers are presenting fiction, documentary and series projects intended to reflect contemporary Moroccan storytelling. The Berlinale Series Market Showcase, on Feb. 16, crystallizes one in every of Morocco’s most strategic shifts: moving from a service destination for other people’s stories to a creator of exportable mental property, including series designed from inception for international co-production.
Titled “Moroccan Series on the Rise: From Local Success to Global Ambitions,” the event guarantees an outline of Morocco’s TV fiction landscape spanning drama, comedy and crime. The showcase centers on a core query: What structural shifts are needed to maneuver from local success to globally oriented productions?
Salim Cheikh, CEO of broadcaster 2M, is slated to deal with audience success, production figures and the role of public broadcasters in constructing a production culture and regulatory framework. Producer Khadija Alami will share insights from her series K-1, including genre decisions, production models and techniques for international visibility. Debbagh will introduce Interzone as a world co-production play. Producer Lamia Chraibi will present an approach rooted in auteur-driven and pan-African projects. Moroccan documentary producer Hind Bensari (475: Break the Silence) will moderate.
Alami, a pivotal figure within the Moroccan film industry, launched her production services company in 1998. Her profession began in 1985, with work on the John Landis film Spies Like Us, starring Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, and on Elaine May’s Ishtar, starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. But an experience tied to her work on George Lucas’ early-Nineteen Nineties television show Young Indiana Jones Chronicles perpetually modified her life. “I used to be working as a coordinator on a show they usually invited me to Skywalker Ranch,” she says. “It was mind-blowing and I discovered this whole recent world … the dimensions is so big in comparison with what we have now in Morocco. [I started thinking] it might be great to have a facility like this [in Morocco].” Alami began purchasing land in Ouarzazate, referred to as the “Hollywood of Morocco,” and in 2015 created Oasis Studios for international and domestic productions. She lives between Morocco and Los Angeles.
In 2017, she became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the primary Arab woman producer and the second Moroccan filmmaker to receive the excellence — and now serves as vice chair of the Academy’s international committee. K-1 can also be programmed for Berlinale Series Selects screenings on Feb. 16 at CinemaxX and Feb. 17 online. The show follows an elite police unit traveling across Morocco to pursue organized crime while confronting personal struggles that shape them into “deeply human and empathetic characters.”
“I’m using all of the things I learned with foreign productions … to do something Moroccan. I’m the showrunner. I had the writing room. I had three different directors. It’s a limited series, eight episodes,” she says.
Morocco, by most measures, offers a trifecta for international film, television and streaming productions: financial incentives, expert technicians, experienced executive producers, and diverse filming locations and casting pools. Structurally, that is supported by a 30 percent money rebate for foreign productions, official co-production agreements with quite a few partner countries and initiatives reminiscent of the Ateliers de l’Atlas, which foster emerging Moroccan and regional filmmakers.
Through the Moroccan Cinema Center, foreign producers can get well as much as 30 percent of eligible in-country expenses, including equipment rental, local crew wages, transportation, logistics, sets and postproduction services. Additional benefits include simplified customs clearance for equipment, symbolic tariffs for filming at historic sites and monuments, VAT exemptions on goods and services acquired in Morocco and air transport rebates from Royal Air Maroc. Government support extends to agencies including the Royal Armed Forces, Royal Moroccan Air Force and Royal Moroccan Navy, alongside streamlined logistics for productions involving military elements or weapons.
Alami notes that productions can open temporary foreign accounts for project-specific entities, maintain control over funds and shut the account once filming wraps. “You don’t must pay taxes here, you don’t pay fringes on crew, you’ve your personal checking account, and also you get a 30 percent money rebate on the eligible spends in Morocco,” she says. The rebate rose from 20 percent in 2018 to 30 percent three years later and requires shoots of a minimum of 18 days and a minimum in-country spending of 1 million euros ($1.1 million), verified through an audit.
Kasbah helmed production services on one in every of the early beneficiaries of the motivation, the Netflix film Mosul, produced by Joe and Anthony Russo. The corporate later collaborated on Cherry, the Russo-directed feature released by Apple TV+, and contributed to major global projects including Amazon’s fantasy series The Wheel of Time. More recently, its work has prolonged to imminent productions reminiscent of Matchbox and the in-development sequel Lords of War, starring Nicolas Cage.
Bianca Gavin, Vice Studios’ head of production for scripted and chair of the Production Guild of Great Britain, recently worked with Kasbah on 2025’s Atomic, a five-part action-thriller series created by Gregory Burke for Sky Atlantic.
“We did lots of feasibility studies taking a look at different countries and Morocco was by far the appropriate place for us. Morocco has precisely the type of mixed terrain and architecture in a comparatively small area to double for many various countries without crossing borders. The abilities that [their filmmaking] legacy builds make working in Morocco really attractive, because they will achieve complex shoots … they’ve done it before.”
She added that, by way of the rebate, “once we had our shooting permit, there’s no ceiling, so you only know that whatever is qualifying, you’ll get back.”
In a significant strategic shift, the Moroccan Cinema Center appointed Mohamed Reda Benjelloun as director in July 2025, setting a forward-looking agenda centered on emerging talent and global positioning. “Moroccan cinema has an extended, wealthy and diverse history, and that legacy is incredibly vital,” he says. “But from the moment I stepped into this role, I felt it was essential to rebalance our focus toward the longer term — toward young and emerging talents, recent voices, recent types of writing and modern narrative formats — while positioning Moroccan cinema more strongly on the international stage.”
He points to the European Film Market’s choice of 10 project holders — “nearly all of them women” — spanning fiction, documentary and series as evidence of an intergenerational shift connecting established professionals with rising creators.
Benjelloun believes Morocco is reaching a moment of cinematic maturity: “This enables us to reclaim our own narratives — to inform our stories ourselves, to share our realities, imaginations and plural identities with the world, fairly than having them defined from the skin.”