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First screened in Paris in 1975, About Some Meaningless Events was immediately banned, censored, and pulled from exhibition and export. In 2016, Filmoteca de Catalunya found a negative print in their archives and restored the film for circulation to audiences across the world.

Around the port, streets, and popular bars of the city, a group of filmmakers conduct discussions with people about their expectations of, and aspirations for, the emerging Moroccan national cinema. When a disgruntled worker accidentally kills his superior, the filmmakers' inquest shifts focus, and they begin to probe the context and motives of the killing. At the heart of De quelques événements sans signification (About Some Meaningless Events) is an interrogation of the role cinema––and art in general––plays in society and in documenting and representing “the real.” Funded by the sale of paintings by several contemporary painters, the film depicts the urgency of the project: a demand for national cinema. And this film, an independent and collective effort of politically motivated militant filmmakers, actors, musicians, poets, and journalists at a time of heightened oppression, expresses the spirit and the possibility of the emerging Moroccan film industry. 

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Festivals and Awards

Berlin International Film Festival, Germany, 2019

FIDMarseille, France, 2019

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About the filmmaker

Mostafa Derkaoui was born in Oujda, Morocco in 1944. Between 1963 and 1964, he studied at the French film school called Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC, now La Fémis) in Paris before studying at the Polish film school Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa i Teatralna in Łódź from 1965 to 1972. In 1974, Derkaoui and his brother founded the production company Basma Productions. De quelques événements sans signification (About Some Meaningless Events) was his first feature-length film.