Hollywood Morocco, Here I come!

Hollywood Morocco, here I come!

18th May, 2023

Yes, it sounds like the big time. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As with all overnight success stories, it takes 10s of 1000s of hours of time, learning, practice etc to achieve. Becoming an actor, let alone a star, or even anybody involved in the movie industry - perhaps even more so than the rest.

But sometimes you can find a niche.

There is a huge industry in Morocco for foreign movies filming here. Anything that’s set in the Middle East – in fact, much more than that – Morocco is currently the biggest go-to place.

It has the look. The government has had the smarts to keep the paperwork within reason (the problem that has taken Egypt out of the picture – once the go-to). Morocco is politically stable, got the infrastructure needed, and a lot cheaper than many places. And it offers much more ‘look’ than just desert scenery. It has sea, mountains – even snow, as well as ancient urban mazes, traditional markets, and deserted landscapes which also fit with a lot of fantasy imagery and action adventure scenarios.

Ait Ben-Haddou. Famously Game of Thrones filmed here, but it is only one of many.

As a result for example, we have all become familiar with the spectacular ghost city of Ait Ben-Haddou, the red desert city in Game of Thrones.

Detail by a friend, artist @Noel_Bensted on Instagram.

It is near Ouarzazate and surrounded by desert, a few hours south of Marrakech.

The seaside ramparts used in Game of Thrones are in Essaouira on the coast south of Casablanca.

And there are many movies filmed in the medinas of Tangier, Fes, and the other cities, or in the Rif mountains. There are James Bond 007 movies, Jason Bourne, Indiana Jones, Inception, Gladiator, Troy, the Mummy movies, Sex and the City…. Even a scene from Mamma Mia!

And if they need non-Moroccans for a crowd scene in these non-Moroccan movies, I’m part of a limited supply! No acting skills required.

When a movie comes up, I make myself available. So when they said they had some filming in Ouarzazate, I jumped. It even worked out perfectly time-wise – they wanted us in Ouarzazate for fittings for Thursday and Friday, exactly my 2 free days between classes. Down on the Thursday, fittings and return on the Friday, before teaching all day on Saturday.

Oh – did I happen to mention that my blogs are mostly about my misadventures?

So Wednesday I’m organizing myself before my afternoon class, and look up the hours. We are to meet at 9am for the bus.

And I realise that Ouarzazate is quite a long way away. By car from Tangier (which is right up at the top) it’s 9 ½ hours – so a bus must take 10 to 15 hours. That means we will get there… possibly as late as midnight.

No problem. I think.

The fittings are to be in the morning til midday on Friday. Presuming they give us lunch first, a 2pm departure means…

…Oh…

…possibly getting back as late as 5am on Saturday morning.

I have to get to school for classes by 8:30am.

But… that should still work.

Knowing that scheduling is a nightmare with movies and constantly changing because there are so many variables, I leave my teaching books at school – just in case – I don’t have the chance to get home before my class, and make sure I have an extra scarf so I’m dressed suitably for the classroom. You know – cover the shoulders and the knees.

All should be good. Leaving at 2pm I’ll be back somewhere between midnight and 5am – enough time for a couple of hours of sleep before school.

Tangier Bay at sunrise.

Thursday

9am

We all gather as asked by 9, though the bus doesn’t come til 10. That was probably planned – to make sure latecomers didn’t delay their plans. While scheduling constantly varies, this does not mean they are not well planned. I find them phenomenally well organized, especially by Moroccan standards.

10am

So off we go – arrival time surely between 10pm and midnight somewhere.

11am

An hour down the road we make a pitstop at Asilah on the beach – coffee break for half an hour. I’ve never been there before, and looking around the streets I make a note to come back – a great looking little medina behind the old town walls.

It turns out that there is a problem. The clothing hasn’t yet turned up, so the pitstop is a wait to confirm whether we continue.

Or go back to Tangier.

Damn. This timing was perfect. But hey-ho.

1pm

After a good couple of hours they call us back to the bus. All is good to go!

So off we go again. I do a quick mental check – we should be there… around midnight or so.

I run to the bus – and something snaps behind my heel, somewhere around my achilles tendon…

In agony I hobble onto the bus. Turns out a long day sitting still on a bus is perfect – I’m resting my foot and it gets less painful through the day.

2am

The trip in the end – not counting the long stop in Asilah – was 14 hours, finishing with a lot of very bendy, bumpy dirt roads, as far as my sleep haze could tell.

By the time we are sorted into rooms it is after 2. Beautiful hotel – pool and bar – if only there was time to enjoy it. But my foot still sore and the hour makes it too much to go back down for a swim.

If only this was the hotel we'd stayed at for the actual movie shoot. I can't help but suspect this was a bit of a sales pitch to make sure we'd do the trip again...

They want us again at 6:30. I set my alarm for 5.30 – 3 hours sleep and just enough time for a swim before breakfast. The realist in me also sets my alarm for 6am.

I reassess the time. If we leave at 2pm the following day, 14 hours will get us back to Tangier around 4am. I nod to myself. That’s doable. I would get another 3 hours of sleep before teaching all day.

Friday

5:30am

My alarm goes. I hit the dismiss.

6am

I drag myself out for a quick breakfast, and off to the bus for the studios and the fitting.

By day, the pool and reception area of the Tirika Hotel.

Daylight now, I peer out at the still sleeping streets of Ouarzazate – the most I will see of it because movie days are very long. A red town just like Marrakech. Pretty. The buildings nod sleepily at me from their neat formation along the streets. They’re far from ready to greet the day yet, much like me. I wonder how it will look when they wake up.

Ouarzazate is an Amazigh or Berber word. These are the original peoples of the region, spread through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and parts of Mali, Niger and Mauritania – all isolated from the rest of Africa by the Sahara. “Ouar” means without, and “zazate” means noise.

The city is also sometimes called “Gateway of the Sahara” or “Door to the Desert”.

The town has more than 7 kasbahs – which are fortified castles – including Ait Ben-Haddou. The biggest one, Kasbah Taourirt, was built in the 1600s.

About half an hour out of Ouarzazate Ait Ben-Haddou – the one of Game of Thrones fame – is a ksar, which is a collection of earthen homes with high walls for protection. In other words, it is a traditional pre-Saharan village.

Then there it is! Just 5 km out of town, the Hollywood of Morocco.

CLA Studios.

Atlas Film Studios, built by Moroccan entrepreneur Mohamed Belghmi in 1983. Movie sets include the prop plane used in Jewel of the Nile, and Egyptian tomb statues used in a myriad of movies.

I look around me.

It is absolutely nothing like Hollywood. Because this is not Hollywood – a detail which doesn’t bother me one bit. Because I’d never be standing in front of the original Hollywood except as a tourist.

Up the hill along the side of the studios is nothing but open ground, dry ground leading off across a desert plain to the mountains, beautiful to be sure – a hazy red backdrop. The main road runs off in either direction past nothing except for the hotel and service station across the road.

I have to add a note here - I had my phone on the wrong camera setting - it was this weird effect, or cheat and use a file photo... 

No palm trees. No Los Angeles hills. No ritzy cars.

But I love it.

This is the Morocco Hollywood – do they call it Mollywood? Is 34 movies released in 2023 glitzy enough to rate such a label?

The biggest film producers in the world are India, courtesy of the biggest world population - a ready made huge viewing market. This is followed by Nigeria, and the USA – Bollywood, Nollywood, then Hollywood. After the billions in China and India, the USA has the next largest population, of 345 million. The next few with over 200 million include Nigeria with 233 million.

Statistics are hard to determine depending on how each country counts it, but typically the annual number of films made are around 1200 for India, 900 for Nigeria and 800 for the USA, with China coming in with over 700.

Add to that the rising star - South Korea, which includes a production which came to Tangier. It’s annual releases have jumped by 81% over the past 6 years!

But here, we’re not talking about local production. We’re talking about where foreign movies do their filming, or at least a part of it. And that is a significant market.

I take a deep breath and step through the side gate.

Of course, the day is not going to have any of that glamour we normally associate with movies. We are led to a huge white tent, stand around in the warming sun waiting to go in, sit around foldup tables waiting for our turn, move to another area and wait some more.

That is what movies are all about.

But they seem to be moving through us decently. Fittings til midday, we’d been told. Lunch, then off at 2pm – 14 hours and back in Tangier around 4am…

All is looking good.

Just 3 of us left – we’ll be finished soon.

12:30pm

Then they send us back out. The costume people are taking a break.

But there are just three of us, and we have a long way back to Tangier… They are firm.

So we have lunch first, and wait. I mentally push the departure time out by an hour – say 5am back in Tangier. I nod to myself. That’s still ok. Just a couple of hours’ sleep, but that’s better than nothing. Then time for something to eat, and head to school by 8:30.

And we wait.

2pm

Finally they call us. Just three fittings – surely just an hour.

When they took their break we couldn’t understand why they didn’t just fit the last three of us and be done. But it’s not as straight forward as that. They have trouble with my outfit – I must have tried on 30 different robes – that of itself is a solid hour of time.

As I put on each outfit I measure up how hot it would be. It’s a hot day, and the filming days in June promise to be another 5 degrees hotter – up in the mid to high 30s, possibly even more. We are after all on the edge of the Sahara. I see that the other two seem to have three layers each. Most of my robes are nice and cool. Until the last one…

I end up with three layers of thick heavy cloth, plus a tight fitting, heavy and hot headpiece with a thick veil… On filming days that swimming pool at the hotel will be heaven.

The fittings are a step back in time by 2000 years, and every detail has to be right. Once they are happy, the boss and the boss’s boss have their input, alter details, and give their final seal of approval, I am sent off to hair and makeup.

I am lucky. Mine is quick. I also realize how lucky we’d been that they took a break before us. Costumes are not allowed out of the costume area. No photos, no costumes allowed out, we are checked in and out of every tent… – in fact they still haven’t announced who the big actors are to be. Any leaks could mean huge revenue loss. So the ones who were already part way through their fittings when it hit the costumers’ lunch time break had had to wait in the costume area without food for that whole time. At least we had been able to eat!

Then there are photos for consistency. Photos of head and shoulders, hair and makeup. Photos of the whole outfit.

Then back through for makeup removal. Back through hair-undo. And back into costume undress.

4pm

Finally we are out. Another quick mental check – that would make it 6am back in Tangier.

Well, at least I wouldn’t be late for school. That also allows for a quick power nap before I’d have to get up to get ready for my full day of teaching. Another hour later and I’d get no sleep. Another hour onto that and I’d have 3 hours of 6 year olds on an empty stomach. But at least I wouldn’t be late for my class.

But wait – only 2 of us are out. One is still in hair and makeup. It is then that I hear of another who had had a wig made, the process in hair taking a full 2 hours.

I sit back with a bottle of water. Hey-ho. There’s nothing I can do about it but wait.

And wait.

And wait.

6pm

The last one finally emerges from the fitting rooms.

14 hours of bus ride, no more mishaps, and that made Tangier 8am. Down to half an hour to grab some pastries, a quick coffee at a café – not even time to go home.

But at least I would make it.

We jump on the bus, it pulls out from the studio…

…and crosses the road to the service station.

I guess that was a smart move – toilets, and supplies. I grab myself not one, but two icecreams, a drink and some nuts.

6:30pm

Finally the bus pulls out. I would have to be happy with just grabbing some pastries in the morning. Let’s hope there are no further delays in the trip home.

And this is where the surprises start. This time, this part of the trip is in daylight. The desert scenery is spectacular - to say the least.

The magnificent hills and breathtaking landscape leaving Ouarzazate.

The whole area has dozens of these tiny but amazing villages, some even more spectacular than the Ait Ben-Haddou. It has just been turned into a tourist village because it is deserted.

This one is in ruins, but the area around Ouarzazate is covered in similar villages to Ait Ben-Haddou. There is another in the background of this photo, on the right.

The sudden splashes of green oasis, with the stark and beautiful red villages climbing the hills, the area was quite startling. There are so many amazing places in the world, and most of them we have never even heard of.

Yet another delightful village. Down here the building tops are geometrically squared like mini castles.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come.

The road in the middle of the night had been indeed windy. Now, still daylight, I got to see why.

And wowow!!!

I have seen photos of spectacular roads like this. I’ve even been on one – well, to be honest that’s all I can claim. I came through the Swiss Alps in January of 2020. I still have to take everyone’s word for how spectacular it is. I had my nose glued to the bus window the whole way, did not sleep a wink – but it was a very, very dark, moonless night!!!!

But this one is in daylight.

Within the top 10 of the worlds most windy roads, there are actually 2 of these in Morocco! 

It starts with valleys, a tiny river running through it – a creek or a stream, really. It is a long way from being grown up enough to be called a river. The base of the valley is a verdant green for maybe 500 metres across. Then the green just stops. It doesn’t fade. It’s like a line drawn, the rubber or eraser used to clean off all the green outside the lines.

And past the green? The pale steep hillsides rising with no vegetation on them, then in the distance the beautiful red haze of mountains I’d seen from Ouarzazate.

The valley gets steeper, the views more spectacular, then the road runs into those switchbacks that places like Switzerland, the Kyber Pass in Pakistan, and places in the Andes are famous for.

Why is this one not shown within these photos? Again I have happened upon yet another incredible and amazing part of the world.

8:30pm

We are still south of Marrakech which is 7 ½ hours of driving to Tangier, plus stops. Assuming no mishaps.

But first, the dinner stop – a final spin on the trip.

At the tail end of the valley we stop at a restaurant with some amazing views and sunset across the valley. But this is not a restaurant to sit and order.

First we have to go to the butcher next door. We point out our meat of choice – I choose some sate kebab sticks, 2 beef, one chicken and one liver (when it’s a regular feature, added to my childhood on sheep and cattle farms, I’ve come to enjoy this particular bit of insides).

But neither they nor the restaurant do the cooking.

We have to go to the next shop which has a huge charcoal grill. They take our meat and do the cooking.

Heading back to the restaurant we walk past a bread shop – big flat loaves that are freshly baked in a big charcoal oven, a speciality, and smelling divine. But no – don’t collect your bread there. Don’t go past go. Don’t collect $200. Go directly to…

…the restaurant, choose your table and enjoy the dying sunset views across that amazing valley.

When it is ready, the meat and bread are brought. This is definitely a worthwhile stop. If only I had marked where it was!

Plus the perfect end to such a Moroccan meal - mint tea! And yes - that’s a giant sugar cube. You break off what you want and put it in, together with the dried spearmint it is sitting on. Pour the tea into your glass from a height. Repeat. This mixes the sugar, because that’s so much more fun than using a teaspoon.

10pm

Still south of Marrakech. Google maps says 7 ½ hours driving from there – plus stops. Will I be back in time for work? Is it time to start thinking how to explain that I’m accidentally in Marrakech? We have to still be a good 8 hours from Tangier.

6am will mean a short nap.

7am will mean a run for some breakfast since I have nothing at home at the minute.

8am will mean pastries…

Any later and I will have a hungry tiring morning of teaching overly energetic 6 year olds…

Saturday

6:30am

The return trip has only taken 12 hours. I guess the downhill from the Rif Mountains near Ouarzazate was faster than the way up. I have time to rush home, say hello to Spain across my sea view, freshen up with a quick shower and head for breakfast and coffee to kickstart the day. Then off to school where I will be all day.

Dawn and back in Tangier.

 But I’m not one to be sensible, and so there is a tiny postscript. You would think that a 12 hour overnight bus trip followed by a full day of teaching and I would have done the sensible thing and gone home to sleep when school was over at 7pm. But I don’t do sensible very well. I find these particular classes so draining that I need to re-energise. That for me means company. And I still have to sort some dinner plan for myself – cooking is not one I am keen on at that point.

So a typical Tangier evening follows – by which I mean, nothing happens as expected.

5 minutes after I sit down at home, a friend messages me to meet for coffee, telling me to get some chicken on the way – we’ll cook at his place, he says. This of course translates to “I am to cook, because he has had such a busy day of work”. But I’m used to my friend’s quirks by now.

And of course, I end up cooking, not just for the two of us – that’s rare – but a party of 5. Some rice cooked absorption method, coloured with turmeric and filled with diced garlic, onion and carrots, the chicken baked in the oven with a range of Moroccan spices, and a fresh salad.

The evening then progresses into a party – it is after all a Saturday night. I make it home after daylight.

Maybe tonight I will sleep.

Part 2 to come - which movie was I willing to go all the way to Ouarzazate for?

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