The short film "Statuette de sable" won, this weekend, the prize for best screenplay, during the National Short Film Festival of Sidi Slimane. This is the first participation in an official competition for this short film, the screenplay of which was written by Houcine Chani. The film was well received by the jury chaired by the director Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi and composed notably of the Tunisian director Mohamed Rezzan, the Algerian director Mina Kessar, and the Moroccan critic Ahmed Sijilmassi.

Produced in 2012 at the initiative of the Zagora International Trans-Saharan Film Festival, this short film (15mn) was shot entirely in the oases of the Draa Valley, in the south-east of the country.

Directed by Aziz Khouadir, this film tells the story of a young man who returns to his native village, after his failure in his medical studies in Europe. The happy reunion between Said and Zineb and a great dinner in honour of the returnee do not prevent controversy from taking hold of the oasis, notably after Said's attempt to sell the community's sand to a large multinational company, under the pretext that he intends to lift the populations out of their poverty.

This was the trigger for a conflict between the inhabitants of the village about the sale of the sand. Attractive sequences follow one another, in a natural setting. The film, whose main characters are played by Hicham Hicham, Ghita Ben Hayoune, and Abdelhadi Tohrach, is the second production of the Zagora Trans-Saharan Film Association which has committed to making films based on award-winning screenplays.