Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we’ll shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week we’re speaking to Moroccan multi-hypenate Khadija Alami. The producer and founder of Morocco’s Oasis Studios talks us through how she has facilitated more than 50 international productions to shoot in the territory as well as her ambitions to grow the region’s studio space and position the country as a top destination for international productions.
Leading Moroccan producer Khadija alami is leading the charge to encourage production companies to set up camps in her North African homeland, as the global production boom continues to grow.
Alami, who was first Moroccan woman in 2017 to join Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, has played a key role in driving local and international content through the country over the years. To date, she’s handled production services and served as co-production partner on more than 50 international productions shooting in Morocco through her banner K-Films.
Titles which she has produced or line produced range from Susanna White’s Our Kind Of Traitor, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips and Showtime’s hit series Homeland. Domestic productions range from Tala Hadid’s The Narrow Frame At Midnight to Nour-Eddine Lakhmari’s Le Regard.
“I’m very proud to be Moroccan and I get so much from my country,”Alami tells Deadline. “It’s a natural thing for me when I’m away to talk about Morocco and how great it is and promote it. I think sometimes people don’t realize that we make wonders and miracles here.”
As she established Oasis Studio Morocco in 2012, her work is more than that of a producer. This studio area is situated on 17 hectares, just 20 minutes away from Ouarzazate. It can accommodate both local and international productions.
It’s attracted projects such as Andy Garcia starrer Redemption Day, Terrence Malick’s The Way Of The WindSeries on UK Channel 4 Baghdad Central. As announced yesterday in Deadline, Alami has optioned Saphia Azzeddine’s novel Bilqiss, which she’ll produce with the Kennedy/Marshall Company. It’s set to be adapted and directed by 1982Oualid Mouaness is the director and will be shooting in the studios.
“Saphia is so witty and Oualid is such a talented director,”She says. “The story is amazing and it’s showing that Muslim women are not only here to obey – they have their own personality, their own strength and they can have a sense of humor.”
Amali, who is a woman with many responsibilities, is President of Ouarzazate film Commission. Her main responsibility is to promote inward investment in the region. Morocco raised its cash rebate to international productions from 20% – 30% earlier in the year. Minimum production spend was set at $1 million. The rebate is available to productions that shoot for 18 days or more in Morocco and hire 25% of the local crew. Alami says the latter. “most of the time productions use more because they are so skilled up.”
Netflix recently used the rebate to film its Laura Dern/Liam Hemsworth love story Lonely PlanetIt aired its third season of fantasy drama in the country. The Witcher.
Alami states that she is currently working on a project to meet the growing demand for local production. “another studio project” in Morocco but indicates it’s still too early to divulge much else.
“We have the crew and we have so many stories that haven’t even been tapped into yet,”She says. “The locations are endless as well. You can do a biblical era, Ancient Egypt, modern war movies, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan – the list goes on.”
Alami and her relatives bought the land that Oasis Studios Morocco is located on in 2010. It took them a while to complete all the paperwork. She then drove Roma Downey (producer) to the abandoned site as they were searching for locations to film their miniseries 2013. The Bible.
“They were looking for biblical villages in Morocco so I took them to the land but there was nothing but rocks and flat land,”Alami. “When I showed them where I envisaged us having the sets, I’m sure they thought I was crazy.”
Just 13 weeks later, they had constructed an ancient village which was doubled as Jerusalem. The set also doubled up as a Roman palace for the series’ sequel AD: The Bible continues.
Alami now divides her time between Casablanca, Los Angeles, and she has a passion for movies since childhood. Her father, a Moroccan movie theater owner, was her father growing up. This meant that she spent much of her childhood watching movies on the big screen.
“It was a bit like Cinema Paradiso,”She recalls. “I saw all of the big, epic Hollywood movies in that theater when I was growing up.”
Alami says that the opportunity to meet new people has been a driving force in her career. “make the impossible possible.” It’s a notion that she says was born out of her first foray into the film industry: During her teenage years, Alami was a competitive horse rider, and it was one summer when she was back from university in northern Morocco that she bumped into a man “with a beautiful horse”They began to talk. He was working on the set of John Landis’ Spies like UsThey were looking for English-speaking students to drive on sets. Later she was hired to drive cast members and crew from Casablanca back to Marrakech.
“It was the first time I really realized it was possible for someone like me to get a chance to work in the industry,” she says, recalling a rather dicey drive across the Moroccan terrain with Landis’ parents in the back seat.
Alami worked as a producer assistant, a renderer, and then she had a stint at an auditor film before she switched to her true passion, producing. K-Films was her working title and she founded it in 1998.
“Production was really what I was interested in,”She says. “I liked the whole challenge of organizing things and trying to make things possible in a production and I think the position of people like myself who are helping facilitate production in Morocco is that we are trying to fill the gap between the world and the Moroccan way of doing things from the administration to the culture to the language barrier – everything. It’s amazing watching production teams from different cultures work together in unison that way.”
Keen to keep building on Morocco’s skillset, Alami is also the president of Morocco’s Mediatalents Association based in Ouarzazate. The network hosts workshops on scriptwriting for local talent.
“This new generation of people I am working with and I’m training and mentoring are just so impressive,”She says. “I’m particularly trying to push women because what I noticed in the education is that women sometimes think they cannot do things, but you just have to push and I hope I’m somebody who sets an example so that they can see everything is possible.”
She continues, “We’ve got a lot to say here in Morocco. It’s an ancient country with an old and diverse history. We’re the only country in North Africa that wasn’t under the Ottoman Empire and we’ve been independent and sovereign all our life. We’re only just beginning to realize the full potential of what we can do.”
This week’s edition of International Disruptors is presented by Guillotine Vodka.