“Batty,” a feature directed by Mohammed Raouf Sebbahi, was selected for the international competition of the 31st Rabat International Auteur Film Festival. The selection gave the Arabic-language Moroccan production a place in the event’s competitive programme. It also marks a new festival step for a Moroccan filmmaker whose earlier features have already circulated through numerous national and international events, according to the professional biography published by the festival.
The screening took place at Cinéma 7ème Art in Rabat on Sunday, November 8, 2026, with the event announcement listing a 17:00 GMT start. Aujourd’hui le Maroc described the presentation as the film’s first international screening. That characterization should remain attributed to the publication, while the festival’s official page directly confirms the selection of “Batty,” the director’s identity and several essential details about the feature itself.
A broader Moroccan presence in competition
“Batty” represented Moroccan filmmaking in the competition, but it was not the country’s only entry. Two additional Moroccan films were also listed among the competing works: Karim Debbagh’s “Five Eyes” and Abdelouahed Mjahed’s “Seul au monde.” This distinction places Sebbahi’s selection within a wider national presence and avoids turning the film’s participation into an unsupported claim of exclusivity. All three titles contributed to Morocco’s representation in the international competition.
The wider programme for the 31st edition announced more than 120 films, including 42 shorts, ten documentaries and a panorama of five Moroccan productions. Within that broad selection, the three national films in international competition complemented the dedicated Moroccan panorama. These figures give audiences a concrete sense of how Moroccan filmmaking appeared across the festival, while also showing that the programme brought together several formats rather than focusing solely on feature-length competitive works.
A writer’s inward journey
Officially listed at 1 hour and 22 minutes, “Batty” is classified by the festival as an Arabic-language feature. Its story follows a renowned writer in his seventies who begins a final journey to recover the lost manuscript of his first novel. The search is also intended to help him reconnect with his younger self, giving the journey both a practical goal and an intimate, retrospective dimension grounded in his relationship with his earliest work.
Through its central character, the film addresses memory, time, identity, artistic creation and reconciliation with the past. The missing manuscript provides the starting point for an inward return, linking the writer’s first novel with the person he has become decades later. Selection for the international competition places this personal narrative in a shared setting for auteur cinema, where it appeared as one part of the festival’s broader competitive programme in Rabat.
Raouf Sebbahi’s path to filmmaking
Born in 1983 to parents who worked as radio journalists, Raouf Sebbahi began working in radio himself at the age of seven. After earning his baccalaureate in modern literature in 2000, he joined the inaugural class of Morocco’s first film school. Three years later, he received a diploma in audiovisual directing, establishing the educational foundation for a career that subsequently developed through the direction of feature films and repeated appearances at festivals.
His first feature, “Hayat,” was released in 2017. According to the biography published by the Rabat festival, it appeared at more than 50 festivals and received 28 national and international awards. Those details place “Batty” within a filmography already shaped by extensive festival circulation. They also show continuity between Sebbahi’s audiovisual education, his early professional experience and the gradual development of a body of feature-length work presented to audiences beyond a single event.
A filmography established on the festival circuit
Sebbahi’s subsequent feature, “The Oasis of Frozen Waters,” had its world premiere at the Cairo International Film Festival in 2022. The director’s biography supplied by the Rabat festival reports that the film later achieved more than 50 festival selections and received over 15 awards. Those organizer-reported figures provide the immediate career context for “Batty” and its selection for the international competition in Rabat during the festival’s 31st edition.
“Batty” also appears in the Moroccan Cinematographic Centre’s 2024 activity report. The document records a 2.5 million-dirham advance before production and lists Yaz Image together with Mohammed Raouf Sebbahi. This information clarifies a documented part of the film’s production financing without determining how the completed work would be received. It connects the 2026 festival presentation to an earlier, formally recorded stage in the development of the Moroccan film project.
What the selection establishes
The verified information establishes that “Batty” received a Rabat screening within the international competition of an edition featuring a varied Moroccan presence. It also shows that the film extends the work of a director whose two previous features built substantial festival records. The significance of this new step should nevertheless be assessed separately from selection alone, without anticipating an award or treating participation as evidence of any later distribution outcome that has not been established.
The November 8 presentation also carries a particular connection to the director’s personal story. Aujourd’hui le Maroc notes that Sebbahi was born in Rabat and discovered cinema there, while describing the screening as the film’s international premiere. Without presenting “Batty” as Morocco’s only competing title, the event therefore brought together a national production, a Rabat cultural programme and a further documented stage in the professional path of its Moroccan filmmaker.
