Private Project

Ait Atta: Nomads of the High Atlas

The Bin Youssef family migrates every year from the desert-like landscape of Nkob to the green pastures of Igourdane. With their goats (number around 800) , donkeys, mules, camels and dogs, each summer they embark on a formidable journey of resilience by foot. Overcoming difficult weather conditions with hot and dry days and cold nights, with limited access to food and water, the family makes their way through uneven terrain with steep climbs and descents, to reach the agdal before the official opening where all the right holders are allowed to take their livestock into the pastures. As part of this traditional system of communal natural resource management, the Ait Atta tribe preserves their ancestral right of access to the agdal dating back hundreds of years, even if it is often times denied and challenged by the villagers settled around. A sensorial ethnographic film on the incredible movement and (im)mobilities of the family and their herd, the film juxtaposes the hopes and constraints, obligations and sacrifices of a family torn apart between their traditions and their need to adapt to modern life. Stretching over the past, present and the future, the film provides an untimely intergenerational perspective on the essence and the very challenges of nomadism within an ever transforming Moroccan society.

  • Inanc Tekguc
    Director
  • Eda Elif Tibet
    Director
  • Eda Elif Tibet
    Writer
  • Inanc Tekguc
    Writer
  • Karma Motion
    Producer
  • Global Diversity Foundation
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour
  • Completion Date:
    August 15, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    Morocco
  • Country of Filming:
    Cyprus, Morocco, Turkey
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:19
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • GOLDEN SUN AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM
    BARCELONA
    Spain
    November 8, 2021
    GOLDEN SUN AWARD FOR BEST DOC FILM
  • HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD Oaxaca Indigenous Film Festival

    Mexico
  • WINNER ONIROS Film Awards New York
  • Mediterranean Film Festival Cannes

    France
    November 4, 2020
  • Barcelona Indie Filmmakers Fest

    March 3, 2021
  • Kosice International Monthly Film Festival
  • Etnografilm Paris 2021
  • Barciff Barcelona Indie Filmmakers Fest
  • Kratovo Ethnological Film Fest
  • International Festival of Ethnological Film Belgrade
  • Moscow International Festival of Visual Anthropology
  • The Lift Off Sessions
  • S.O.F.A Film Festival
  • International Migration & Enviornmental Film Festival Toronto
  • International Nature FilmFestival Gödöllö Nature and Enviornmental Protection Festival
  • EthnoFest Athens 2021
  • Essex Doc Fest
Director Biography - Inanc Tekguc, Eda Elif Tibet

Eda Elif Tibet is an independent documentary film maker and a visual anthropologist from Istanbul. She filmed and directed award winning documentary films under her own label www.karmamotion.com , a non- hierarchical collective run by academics, artists and activists. Her recent films are ; Awakening a Fairy Tale (forthcoming, 2021), Ait Atta: Nomads of the High Atlas (2020), Ballad for Syria (2017), Refugee Here I Am (2015), Hey Goat! (2014) AMCHI (2013), 28 Days on the Moon (2012).

She is currently a Post-Doc researcher at the Institute of Geography (University of Bern). She has obtained her PhD from the University of Bern (Switzerland, 2019) and holds an MPhil degree on Social Anthropology from the University of Kent (UK, 2013). As part of her research funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, she followed the lives of the unaccompanied asylum seeking youth in Turkey right at the time of the drafting processes of the EU & Turkey deal (2015-2016), Project Web Site: www.transeduscapes.com .

Her research and teaching encompass the relations between postcolonial thought and mobilities, the commons and the sustainability transition movements, sentient ecologies between nature and culture, the application of critical pedagogies, as well as strategies of non-formal education, to social movements and the promotion of participatory action research.

She is an advisory member of the Enacting Global Transformation Initiative at the University of Oxford and a founding member of ETHNOKINO, a curatorial ethnographic film screening program taking place at the Kino in der Reitschule cinema in Bern, Switzerland.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I make films not for states or currency, our stories are told by us the common people for a more just world.