“Each year, we made a 6.50m screen that we destroyed at the end of the festival because we didn’t know where to store it”, Hicham Falah, the general delegate of the International Documentary Festival (Fidadoc) remembers how point he was forced to tinker. But this year, it was the end of the ephemeral installations: for the first time in eleven years, the demonstration took place in a real cinema, the Sahara. Inaugurated in the presence of the mayor of Agadir and current head of government, Aziz Akhannouch, the reopening of the place, after thirteen years of closure, has come to fill a void in a city long deprived of cinemas. In the process, the municipality announced the renovation of another closed cinema: the Salam.
Although they are welcomed positively by professionals, who see them as a sign of a “new dynamic”, these reopenings take place in a difficult context for historic halls. While more than eighty festivals dedicated to the 7th art took place in 2022, the Moroccan Cinematographic Center (CCM) only listed 21 cinemas in operation: there were 250 forty years ago. Some cities, such as Essaouira, no longer have them. Others, like Fez, Morocco’s second city with 1.3 million inhabitants, have only one. The absence of a cinema in Ouarzazate, however presented as the “African Hollywood”, whose sets regularly host international filming, is a paradox in a country that boasts of its know-how to foreign productions.
Announced in 2022, the closure in Casablanca of the emblematic Rialto, built in 1929 and classified as a historical monument, alone illustrates the decline of single-screen cinemas. In the economic capital, only four were still open last year, compared to around fifty previously. “Very few people make money from these neighborhood cinemas,” says Hassan Belkady. This dental surgeon, who operated “by passion” five rooms in the city center at the end of the 1990s, had to resolve to close three of them: the Coliseum, the Mamounia and, more recently, the ABC, which has not reopened since the Covid-19 pandemic. Closed for three years, the Ritz has been completely renovated and will reopen in September. Result: the operator’s box office receipts fell from 1 million dirhams (92,600 euros) in 2019 to 265,000 dirhams in 2022.
“The Moroccan Adventure”
Highly anticipated by exhibitors, the year 2022, which was to be synonymous with post-Covid recovery, was below forecasts: less than 1.5 million admissions, compared to nearly 1.9 million in 2019, according to the CCM. With 77 million dirhams, box office receipts fell by 20% over the period. “Between 2019 and 2022, I sold 65% fewer tickets,” said Pierre-François Bernet, operator of the CinéAtlas Colisée in Rabat. While there were on average three big productions per month before the pandemic, there was only one per quarter last year. »
Tempted by “the Moroccan adventure”, the president of the company Chrysalis Films in France, and of its subsidiary CinéAtlas Holding in Morocco, started in 2018 with a four-screen complex in the Moroccan capital, before inaugurating in 2022 three theaters in Al-Jadida, 100 km south of Casablanca. A risky bet that he considers “successful”: with the release of the Oppenheimer films and, above all, Barbie, which he distributed in Morocco, 2023 promises, according to him, to be “a good year”. “In two weeks, I made as many entries as in two months”, welcomes the operator-distributor, who sees bigger: he acquired Mauritania in Tangier, which he plans to reopen at the end of the year, after transforming it into five halls, and plans to launch nine other halls in shopping centers in Casablanca and Rabat.
The growth of cinemas in Morocco is driven almost exclusively by multiplexes. Of the 70 existing screens in 2022, 48 belong to the leader Megarama. “A situation on the verge of oligopoly, regrets the Franco-Moroccan actor Tarik Mounim, founder of the association Save cinemas in Morocco. Mégarama, which is also one of the heavyweights of film distribution, brings rain and shine. The operator’s market share in distribution, which exceeded 20% in 2022, makes it number two in the sector. The average price of tickets sold by the brand is also among the highest. In 2024, the company announced the opening of five venues in Agadir and three in Marrakech.
“Stillborn Project”
Megarama’s dominance could be shaken, however. In a few months, the group will face its first serious rival: Pathé, which will inaugurate an eight-screen complex in Casablanca at the end of the year, whose lessor is none other than the royal holding company SNI. “There were 40 million admissions per year in cinemas in Morocco in the early 1980s, our ambition is to bring the public back to theaters,” explains Frédéric Godfroid, director of operations for Pathé in Africa. To achieve this, the group has invested 100 million dirhams and is counting on state-of-the-art equipment with, “for the first time in Morocco”, 4DX technology. Objective: to replicate the experience of Tunisia, where Pathé arrived in 2018. “Thanks to us, attendance has increased from 600,000 admissions in 2017 to 1.2 million in 2019”, explains Mr. Godfroid.
Alongside Mégarama, Pathé and CinéAtlas, the multiplex market will see the entry of a fourth player in 2024. Chaired by Hakim Chagraoui, distributor of brands specializing in projection and sound, the Moroccan company Cinerji has announced the opening, by 2027, of 28 multiplexes for a total of 150 rooms. The network will include old cinemas, new theaters in shopping centers and others built on bare land.
Investment amount: 400 million dirhams, half of which is financed with equity. “The rest comes from a Moroccan fund and another, foreign, already present in cinema in the Middle East. I can’t say more for the moment,” says the founder, who insists on a “business model” closer to events than to cinema: to compensate for the price of the ticket at 40 dirhams (3.70 euros), the businessman wants to bet on food and drink, as well as renting rooms to companies.
” I do not believe it. The starting bet is enormous and the number of rooms announced utopian, nuance a professional, who wishes to remain anonymous. Cinerji wants to go low-cost, but that’s not the trend. To convince a viewer to leave their living room, you have to offer them a premium experience. In 2009, the CCM was already planning to open 300 new cinemas thanks to the creation of an investment fund. “A stillborn project”, summarizes an operator, who calls for “an urgent awareness” of the public authorities.
“Reviving this heritage”
To increase attendance, the Ministry of Culture announced the transformation in 2022 of 150 places belonging to it to make them screening rooms with an entrance ticket at 20 dirhams. But the project has been postponed until 2024, officially due to the delay in material imports from China. “We don’t know anything about the schedule or who will be in charge of managing these places. We are already having trouble finding projectionists, ”wonders Hassan Belkady, who points to the lack of training in exhibition trades.
What about, meanwhile, the dozens of cinemas that have closed in recent years? Hicham Falah, also general delegate of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, recommends continuing the experiences of buyouts by the authorities carried out in Agadir and Tangier. “Even if the law regulates the destruction of cinemas, the owners prefer to let them deteriorate, to the point that their demolition becomes a measure of public safety. »
For his part, Tarik Mounim pleads for a partnership between municipalities and civil society, like the Louxor cinema in Paris. “In Casablanca alone, there are about twenty classified cinemas. We must revive this heritage, “he warns. His dream: to reopen the Ciné-Palace in Marrakech, partially destroyed in 2018. Built in 1926, the place is a carbon copy of a legendary cinema: the Eden of the Lumière brothers, in La Ciotat.
