Toronto Festival’s Experimental Animated Feature ‘Bouchra’ Finds North American Home With Film Movement (Exclusive)

Film Movement has bought North American rights to “Bouchra,” a fusion of queer storytelling and experimental animation, which debuted at Toronto in the Platform section.

“Bouchra” is directed by a duo of visual artists, Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani, who last collaborated on “2 Lizards,” a pandemic-era series now held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Film Movement will bring “Bouchra” to theaters in 2026, before expanding the film’s reach across leading VOD and digital platforms and the home entertainment marketplace.

Set between Morocco and New York City, “Bouchra” follows a Moroccan filmmaker living in New York who finds herself stuck in a creative crisis. “A phone call with her mother, Aïcha, in Casablanca triggers a cascade of memories — some tender, some fraught — opening a luminous pathway through daughterhood, family bonds, diasporic longing, and the exhilarating, complicated freedom of queer love,…