Having just wrapped its fifth year, the festival still lacks a solid identity. For one thing, it still hasn't settled on a date. It began in September 2001, each year it has hopscotched across the fall calendar, settling this year in November, just after Ramadan. But more importantly, it still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. And yet it seems to want to be all things at once. Marrakech longs to generate the hype and glamour of Cannes, to support emerging talent like Sundance, to be taken as seriously by Hollywood as Toronto and to provide as unique and intriguing a setting as Venice.

But like any five-year-old, it is still learning and stumbling toward its goal. This is not to say it hasn't met with some success. The involvement of the Tribeca Institute provides a stamp of legitimacy through its Directors Table workshops, bringing young filmmakers together with venerable directors like Martin Scorsese and Abbas Kiarostami for a once in a lifetime opportunity to exchange ideas in this intimate setting.

In the official program, HRH Prince Moulay Rachid, heir to the Moroccan throne, declares “The lastingness of the Festival is established with the ultimate conviction that Cinema can make the world a better place.” The poor translation from French in many ways reflects the tenor of the festival as a whole. It is sincere but confused (if not confusing). The selection of films doesn’t seem to have any clear focus outside of the celebration of cinema as it relates to past and present Marrakech and the financial development of film production for the future of the city. The Wali of the Marrakech Region, Mounir Chraibi, is less obtuse (and less romantic) when speaking about the festival’s purpose, citing that of encouraging film production in Marrakech and “a number of investment projects related to the cinema industry.”

And if Marrakech hopes to raise attention with its glitz factor, it has to draw some big Hollywood names and marketable film premieres to mix up with its already eclectic European and Asian base. That does not mean the festival is without some potent industry support. This year such luminaries as Martin Scorsese (who admits to a “longstanding love affair” with the city of Marrakech and has shot two films there on location—The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun), Daniel Day Lewis (who won Best Actor for his performance in The Ballad of Jack and Rose), Dame Judi Dench (star of the opening film Mrs. Henderson Presents ) and Gus Van Sant (no films but “a good time to vacation”) were in attendance. Additionally, Catherine Deneuve and Monica Bellucci spent some currency of beauty at the opening and closing ceremonies respectively.

Clearly, the festival has friends in high cinematic places. Bellucci contends that “Morocco is a symbol of freedom, that’s why this festival, in this place, is important.” But it still needs to convince the bean-counters and image-makers back in Hollywood that it’s worth sending their fresh product off for unveiling to the world in a city with no direct flights from North America (32 hours of travel, four flights and an unexpected night in Montreal to get to Los Angeles). For studios to take that risk, the most influential American press needs to descend on Marrakech in droves the way they do at Toronto, Sundance and Cannes. And let’s not kid ourselves, the success of those festivals depends largely on A-list glamour and a stream of big name stars—with that kind of exposure, such festivals can afford to support the proliferation of artistic cinema and encourage new discoveries in direction and performance in a venue where taking notice makes a difference (ie, acquisition executives are compelled to attend). Right now, Marrakech is a respectable third tier festival with a primarily European and French-Canadian press contingent (there were four American print journalists covering the festival this year).

And though Marrakech is a competitive festival, the competition feels about as authentic as a cubic zirconia. The opening ceremony was poorly attended, though there were throngs of locals held at bay outside the Palais des Congres theater that would surely have enjoyed the spectacle inside. This year, the fifteen films in competition represented fourteen countries, mostly from Europe and Asia (the only country with two entries was the United States). Two films were from North Africa, including one Moroccan production, El Ayel .

Though not the most outstanding of the entries, Moumen Smihi’s El Ayel is worth attention. Like the festival itself, the narrative is sometimes loosely connected and often meandering. It is a story of Muslim childhood through the eyes of Mohammed Larbi (Abdesslam Begdouri), a moody, 10-year old loner in 1950’s Tangier. Larbi is sickly from childhood, frail and awkward. His father is a progressive Muslim whose Koranic catechism is fair and enlightened but inescapable. Larbi suffers through a traumatic circumcision and eventually runs away to live on the streets as he tries to understand his place in the world. The film is a cinematic love letter to Tangier and explores European cultural influence on modern Morocco, most notably cinema. Larbi’s fascination with the world outside of Tangier, a world he knows only through the movies, culminates in a Cinema Paradiso -esque homage to love and film.

Another competition film of note is Florian Gallenberger’s Schatten Der Zeit (Shadows of Time). A curious amalgam of German rigidity and Indian sentiment set in Calcutta, it deals with themes of love, loneliness, estrangement, abandonment and surrender. Told in flashback, Schatten Der Zeit is the heartbreaking story of Ravi and Masha, two children sold to textile a factory in colonial India. Ravi develops an affection for Masha and spends his paltry life savings to buy her freedom. She vows to meet him in the largest Shiva in Calcutta when he is able to get free himself. She promises to go there on every full moon, and dutifully does so … even as she is tricked and then abducted into child prostitution. The one day, as young adults, she finally sees him—with another woman – she believes he has forsaken her and runs away. Circumstance and desire throw them together, however, time and again throughout their lives, and yet, in the tradition of stoic melodrama, neither of them speak up at the right times … misstepping love their entire lives. When Masha tells him that happiness is something one gives to others we swallow it entirely, though neither of them take it for themselves.