AICHA, a short film by Sanaa El Alaoui, is poised to world premiere as part of the Short Film Competition of the Krakow Film Festival — one of Europe's oldest events dedicated to showcasing film in all its forms. Held continuously since 1961, the 65th edition of this time-honored festival is due to run from May 25th to April 1st. 

A once emotionally distant mother joins a mystical ceremony to face her grief and the lost bond with her 17-year-old daughter after the latter’s life takes a tragic turn.

Speaking on her featurette, Alaoui stated, “Watching AICHA breaks the illusion of time’s linearity, allowing you to see life and death unfold simultaneously”, further adding that, “Trauma shatters our perception of time and space; it reshapes our identities. It offers us either the chance to let go or to be reborn, and that is the journey of the daughter and her mother.”
Starring Hind Dafer, Manal Bennani, Mohamed Amine Kihal, Sanaa El Alaoui, Kenza Fridou, Soumia Belkaria, and Mustapha Rachdi, AICHA is written and directed by Sanaa El Alaoui, produced by Piotr Kaczorowski, shot by Oskar Jan Król, edited by Michał Buczek, and animated by Tomek Popakul & Kasumi Ozeki. The film is distributed across Arab-speaking territories by MAD Distribution while its international sales are handled by MAD World.

Moroccan director and screenwriter Sanaa El-Alaoui is a graduate of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where her research on the art of the long take in film earned her the Best Thesis of the Year Award, and the University of Oxford, where she explored the evolution of Moroccan cinema from its colonial past to the post-colonial present. 

El-Alaoui made her directorial debut with ICARUS — a Hungarian short documentary that received widespread acclaim, winning the Bronze Award for Best Short Documentary at the fourth Quarter of the Queen Palm International Film Festival in California, Best Short Documentary at the International Film Festival of Oued Noun, Grand Prize for Best Short Film at the National Film Festival of Cinema of the Margin in Guercif, and Jury Award for Best Short Film at the International Film Festival of Casablanca.