A confrontation with auteur cinema as an art of thought; a platform for bold, personal, and convention-defying works that resist the homogenization of taste and revisit the human condition in all its existential complexity.
Festival Name: Rabat International Author Film Festival (FICAR)
Location: Rabat, Morocco
Festival Dates: November 7–13, 2026
Edition: 31st Edition
Organizer: FICAR
About the Festival:The Rabat International Author Film Festival is dedicated to auteur cinema – a cinema recognized, in all its forms, as a cinema of art and thought. The festival welcomes bold, intellectually engaged, challenging, intelligent, and even radical films; works that break apart clichés and, through an inner necessity and a singular, personal mode of expression, reflect on the human being and humanity in all their dimensions and manifestations.
Themes and Focus Areas:The aim of the Rabat International Author Film Festival is to create a space for recognition and dialogue among films, filmmakers, and audiences. The festival proposes an alternative approach to the industrial machinery of cinema – a system that, through the globalization of tastes, has diminished or erased the right to be different. It stands against profit-driven and consumerist cinema, as well as against the dominance of a single taste over art; a taste that actively participates in shaping and restricting our collective imagination.
Accepted Genres:Experimental short films, experimental feature films, feature documentaries, feature animation films, short fiction films, short documentaries, and short animation films.
Year of Production:Films completed after November 1, 2024.
Language and Subtitles:All international films must include suitable subtitles in either French or English.
Entry Fee: $30 USD
Submission Deadline:September 17, 2026
Additional Notes:For the submission of international feature films, a Moroccan premiere is required. Feature films that have previously been screened in Morocco will neither be reviewed nor accepted. The festival covers the travel expenses of the directors of selected international films to Morocco in order to attend festival screenings and related activities, subject to the applicable terms and conditions.
