Autlook Filmsales has released “Don’t Let the Sun Go Up on Me,” a hybrid documentary by pioneering Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir, whose “The Mother of All Lies” won the Cannes Best Documentary Award and the “Un Certain Regard” Director’s Award. The project, which is currently in production, will be screened as a work-in-progress at the Atlas Workshop at the Marrakech Film Festival next week.
Combining extensive family archives with impressive, surreal location work, the film follows the life of Fatimazara, a young woman born with a rare genetic disease that causes death from exposure to sunlight. She lived a parallel nocturnal life and founded a community known as the Children of the Moon. After her death in 2023, the group traveled to Norway’s Lofoten Islands to live under the polar night in search of a world safe from darkness.
“We’re talking about a rare disease with a very powerful antagonist: the sun,” El Moudir says. “What usually represents joy becomes a source of danger. For this community, light can kill. In that sense, this project is like a realized vampire movie. We are exploring how this hidden community lives within us, a community that most people don’t even know exists, but I don’t want to paint them as victims.”
“I always try to find fantasy in reality,” she continues. “Reality for some is science fiction for others. We explore romantic relationships between people who live in a world that looks like science fiction to you and me. They go out day and night wearing astronaut helmets, but for them this is normal life. How do they see each other? How will love and connections form within this community after the death of their leader Fatimazara?”
El Moudir is also producing in collaboration with Emma Reppers of Haut et Côte d’Oc, Monika Helström of Strom Pictures and Lofoten Film Collective. Delivery is scheduled for 2027.
“After our first collaboration on The Mother of All Lies, it felt perfectly natural to continue our partnership with Asmae,” says Autlook Filmsales CEO Stephanie Fuchs. “From our first conversation, it was clear that she was embarking on another bold, visually striking project that brings young people who have been marginalized for most of their lives to the forefront. With producer Emma Reppers and co-producer Monika Helström on board, this is a truly dreamlike setting and we can’t wait to see Asmay’s unique vision unfold. We’re sure buyers and festivals alike will want to discover it.”
El Moudir presented “The Mother of All Lies” through Atlas Workshop, first participating as a development project in 2019 and winning the Best Post-Production Award in 2021. In addition to winning at the Cannes Film Festival, this hybrid documentary won Best Picture at the Sydney Film Festival and over 30 international awards, and made history as the first Moroccan film to win Marrakech’s prestigious Etoile d’Or. The film was also shortlisted for the 2024 Oscar for Best International Feature.
“Asmae started this film without a producer,” says Marrakech’s artistic director Remi Bonhomme. “She has become an iconic figure in Morocco because she truly paved the way for a new generation of filmmakers and showed them what was possible. We are not yet at the stage where we can present our projects on the international market, but we need guidance in the early stages of development and a better understanding of how the industry works. We created the Atlas program to support a very young filmmaker. ‘The Mother of All Lies’ was a turning point and opened the door for filmmakers and producers who had previously felt excluded from the possibility of making films that could have such a global reach.”
