Fevers

Morocco, France, United Arab Emirates
Producer: Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff, Natacha Delmon Casanova
Production Company: La Vingt-Cinquième Heure Production

Project Logline:

Benjamin, aged 13, is a little soldier battling against life, against the adults, against himself. Scarred and tormented kid he's grown up without a father and with a completely troubled mother. From shelter to shelter since he's five years old, Benjamin can't stand authority nor confinement which causes him to constantly scape. Eventually, his mother goes to prison revealing to the social services and to him the identity of his father. To Benjamin the objective is simple: to quit the shelter, so when given the choice he decides to go living at his father's. Karim Zeroubi, his father, is a broken up man on his forties who still lives at his parents at the Parisian suburban ghetto, which he has never left. Warehouseman at a supermarket, rather waits for death that contents himself with his little life. Benjamin's presence will completely turn upside down the life of his father and his family. A truly whirl of violence and energy, the kid will summon his grandparents from a sort of mourning life caused by the loss of their son years ago. Benjamin's fury and his extreme fragility scare out his new family who doesn't know how to deal with him. His father tries clumsily to bond together with him but ends up utterly overwhelmed by this wild, cruel beast. Randomly wandering thru the suburbs, Benjamin comes across Claude, a cranky poet who lives in a caravan lost in the middle of nowhere. Their relationship is built of surrealistic and poetic exchanges, both of them are artists.

Hicham Ayouch is a Moroccan director born in 1976. He is a former journalist, he worked in several French channels before he became a writer and a director. He began with two documentaries “The King’s Queens” about the status of the women in Morocco and “Angel’s dust” about autistic teenagers. He also directed two features, “Heart Edges” a story of a dead fisherman village and recently “Cracks” a love triangle between three misfits in Tangiers. “As They Say” is a short film, which has been commissioned by the Sharjah Art Biennale.