A bridge between two shores.
Since 2022, La Dolce Vita à Mogador has brought Italian and Moroccan cinema together in Essaouira every spring.
Fellini in Mogador.
Essaouira, a city that never lacks daring and that nothing can stop, chose to call upon Federico Fellini and his signature film of the 1960s, “La Dolce Vita”, to launch the first edition of the youngest of its festivals.
An annual event that invites film lovers to rediscover the exceptional richness of the Italian school and its unrivalled contribution to the universal magic of the 7th art.
“La Dolce Vita” also embodies what people come to Essaouira to find: elegance, conviviality, passion, creativity and the sweetness of life.
Nothing beats the big screen.
Cinema is no stranger to the history of Mogador-Essaouira: many films were shot here from the very birth of the cinematograph, and several picture houses opened at the dawn of the 20th century.
The great story begins in the late 1940s, when Orson Welles settled here to shoot “Othello”. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1952 — a Palme that Welles insisted be shared with Mogador and Morocco.
For more than twenty years, the people of Essaouira had forgotten the way to a cinema. In October 2022, the Essaouira Mogador Association, in partnership with the Embassy of Italy in Morocco, found it again with a new event: La Dolce Vita à Mogador.
Four days, two cinemas.
Cinema as a tool for learning.
Screenings for pupils and students are a cornerstone of the festival. Here cinema is conceived as a tool for learning, cultural openness and intercultural dialogue, one that can sharpen critical thinking.
In partnership with the Hassania II Institute for Artistic and Cultural Awakening, each edition offers films for young audiences, followed by masterclasses on careers in film.
Schools screenings
Films selected for Essaouira’s pupils, followed by discussions in the theatre.
Masterclasses
Editing, criticism, photography: the craft of cinema told by those who practise it.
Citizenship
A lasting bond between culture, education and Essaouira’s future generations.
Ninety years of Cinecittà.
90 years of Cinecittà (1937–2027). The festival takes its name from La Dolce Vita, which Fellini shot in these Roman studios: paying tribute to them means returning to the origin of its name, and to the workshop where so much of Italian cinema’s imagination took shape.