This year, the Asilah Europe-Orient Documentary Film Festival is preparing to blow out its third candle with an eclectic programme. Debates, master classes, film screenings, and a unique theatrical performance... this edition, scheduled for 14 to 17 October, promises more discoveries. China will be the guest of honour at the event. The opportunity for the public to discover the cinematographic production in full movement and mutation of this country.

Asilah is preparing to host a new edition of its Europe-Orient Documentary Film Festival. Scheduled for 14 to 17 October, the event, organised by the office of the Moroccan Association for Media Studies and Documentary Films, will have China as its guest of honour. This will be the opportunity for Moroccan cinephiles to discover contemporary Chinese cinematographic production. In this sense, an important delegation, composed of Chinese filmmakers, artists, and producers, will be present. And from the opening ceremony of this edition, the public will be entitled to a theatrical performance "The Journey of Ibn Battuta to China", which the Festival has programmed in collaboration with the Shanghai Theater Academy and Tangier Acting Studio. The travels of Ibn Battuta, born in 1302 in Tangier, led him to the most distant regions of the 14th-century Muslim world, to arrive as far as China. This edition also provides for debates, screenings of documentary films from various horizons, master classes, among other activities.

The films that have been chosen represent several European, Arab, and Asian countries. They will be in competition to compete for five awards: the grand prize, the jury prize, the best director prize, the critics' prize, and the screenplay prize. A rich and varied programme that aims to promote cultural and intellectual dialogue between nations through cinema. This has even been the sensitive heart of this festival since its first edition three years ago. "Morocco is the country of the Andalusian civilisation which took charge of Islamic culture for eight centuries, highlighting the relationship of man with himself and with his environment. We wish, through this festival, to renew this civilisational scope to build a cinematographic culture, uniting the Orient and Europe in the city of Asilah," indicates the Bureau of the Moroccan Association for Media Studies and Documentary Films.

The festival will thus attempt to reinforce this image and bring civilisations closer together. Given its geographical location, its millennial history, its authenticity, and its openness, Morocco is considered the best host for this type of event. "This cultural initiative aims to consecrate the role of Morocco as a land of meeting, sharing, and dialogue of different cultures and as a bridge between Europe and the Orient," indicate the organisers. This event enriches the cultural agenda of the city of Asilah and reinforces its vocation as a city of arts and cultures and a crossroads for artists, intellectuals, and researchers from the four corners of the world.