Three fugitives rule the desert in the Queens trailer

In her first feature film, Yasmine Benkirane takes us aboard a truck driven at high speed on sandy roads.

“Casablanca, Morocco. Zineb escapes from prison to save her daughter from state custody. But things quickly become complicated when she takes a truck driver, Asma, hostage. With the police on their heels, the three women embark on a dangerous chase across the Atlas, its red rocks and its burning deserts…”

In the way of Thelma and Louise, Zineb, Inès and Asma are on the run for wanting to be free. The truck becomes a stagecoach in the middle of desert expanses reminiscent of those of Texas or Arizona, cutting through the dust of a road trip resembling a criminal chase. Three female characters, three identities which are constructed against, but together, marginalized and marginalized lionesses, pushed into the confines of an arid territory by a patriarchal society represented by the multitude of men they meet on their path.

Presented at the end of the Venice Film Festival’s critics’ week in 2022, Queens is the first feature film of Yasmine Benkiran, Moroccan-French film and television director and screenwriter. It follows his short film Winter Timewhich already featured a wandering, that of a couple, locked outside in the middle of the night.

In Queensin addition to that of wandering, Yasmine Benkiran also explores the themes of “freedom, the power of the imagination and disobedience”.

“For me, there is no learning without disobedience, she details. We must always question moral conformity. Cultivate critical thinking and independent thinking. In some realities, disobeying becomes a duty. Queens is a film where each character regains control of their destiny and becomes a subject again. The film questions different female figures from a bygone era: to remain wisely obedient in the image of a pure virgin or to emancipate oneself by experiencing a certain form of opprobrium?

A resolutely feminist reflection, therefore, and for which she surrounded herself with three actresses capable of supporting the weight of this sorority under construction: Nisrin Erradi (Zineb), Nisrine Benchara (Asma) and Rayhan Guaran (Inès).

Queens will be available in cinemas from May 15.

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