Laila Marrakchi on Female-Driven Drama Strawberries in Cannes

Paris-based, Casablanca-born director Laila Marrakchi – whose first feature “Marock” screened in Cannes in 2005 – is back in Un Certain Regard with female-driven migrant drama “Strawberries” about a group of Moroccan seasonal laborers hired to pick strawberries in Spain who decide to stand up to their abusive employers.

After portraying Morocco’s upper classes in “Marock” and “Rock the Casbah” (2013) – and then veering into TV by directing episodes of Damien Chazelle’s “The Eddy” for Netflix and of several French TV series including “The Bureau” – Marrakchi now turns her eye to the true story of young women who leave Morocco for a strawberry farm in Southern Spain in hopes of providing a better life for their families, only to contend with harassment and inhumane living conditions.

Marrakchi speaks to Variety about transitioning from depicting Morocco’s moneyed milieu to delving into the lives of lower class Moroccan women whose steely pursuit of a better life she found inspiring.

How did ‘Strawberries’ originate?

A journalist who is a very close friend of mine told me about this woman, [named Hasna in the film], who left her family to go to Spain to work on a strawberry farm and once she was there decided to fight against the exploitation that was taking place. My friend was assigned to do an article about this for The New York Times. So I went with her to Andalusia, to Huelva, precisely. And I really discovered another world, so I decided to do some research and meet her and some pickers. I was really moved by this woman. That’s why I decided to do this film.

So it’s the female prism on migrant worker exploitation that’s not just economic but also sexual, that drew you to this story. Am I right?

Yes. They are all mothers and they leave their families behind and go to Spain for money, hoping for a better life in Morocco after doing this work. For me, it was the fact that these women are so strong, so capable, so courageous. And when I met them, I realized that I had always wanted to make a film about this type of women. Not a miserable film, but something about their strengths. They don’t have any skills, you know, they don’t have anything. But they are strong.

This is a very vivid film. Tell me more about the research and the writing process.

I met the real characters that my friend told me about. But in the end, I decided to make a fictional film because it was really complicated and I was not making a documentary. So in the end, with my screenwriter, Delphine Agut, we decided that it was best to take some distance from all that we had seen and read and work on it also with our imagination. Because for Hasna coming to Spain is like getting a second chance in life and it’s like a dream. So the film is about how the illusion of this dream, of this El Dorado, is then shattered by reality.

Talk to me about your casting choices: specifically working with Nisrin Erradi, who plays Hasna.

When I was in prep I thought about using the real [strawberry] pickers. But then I said ‘No,’ because it’s ultimately a fictional story, so I prefer to go with real actresses. Also, it’s a lot of responsibility when you work with non-actresses. Because after the film, what’s gonna happen to them? So I said: OK, I love Nisrin. I think she’s strong. I saw her in “Everybody Loves Touda” and in “Adam.” She’s powerful. She was the character that I wrote.

Was there any backlash in Spain while you were making this film?

Yes. When we scouted in Spain, it was complicated for us to visit a real farm because of the news articles that had come out about the exploitation in Andalusia. People get scared when they see a camera. That’s why we shot the greenhouses in Morocco.