Between two breaths, two eras gaze at one another. One rises from memory, the other reaches toward the sky. And in that silent face-to-face, a lone figure tries to grasp what time makes of us — and what we make of time.

We talk endlessly of reforming the school. But who still dares to dream it? Before it is a building or a curriculum, a school is an idea—the idea of learning how to become human. And this is the idea we have forgotten.

I am not a political scientist. I neither possess the expertise nor the pretension to claim such a title. I am simply a Moroccan citizen and artist—engaged, concerned, and deeply affected by what has been unfolding in my country over the past several weeks. And because I believe that the artist has a role to play in society, that their voice is not a posture but a responsibility, I write these lines not to judge, but to understand. For I believe that art, thought, and speech

When I look back at the past two decades, it feels like a film reel running at double speed: scenes of late nights on set, endless edits, festival screenings, client meetings, unexpected collaborations, and moments of silence where doubt felt louder than applause. Twenty years in images is both a lifetime and the blink of an eye.

There was a time when I stopped. Not because I ran out of ideas — but because the noise around creation became louder than creation itself.

Cinema is, above all, the science of the unexpected. Every shoot is a delicate dance between vision and reality, and no matter how carefully a scene is planned, something unforeseen will always arise. The key to mastering this unpredictable world is anticipation — the ability to foresee, prepare, and solve problems before they happen.

When people watch a film, they often admire the director, the actors, the cinematography, even the music. Rarely does anyone think about the person quietly holding the production together, anticipating crises before they happen, orchestrating chaos into order: the first assistant director (1st AD).

I still remember the phone call. We were in the middle of a shoot — the kind of day where everything finally starts aligning: the light,...

There’s a particular silence that comes when you finish a project. The lights dim, the editing timeline is exported, the client nods, the curtain closes. For a moment, there is relief. And then, almost instantly, there’s the emptiness of “what’s next?”