Laïla Marrakchi arrived at Cannes with a film that refuses to look away from the women laboring at the edge of Europe’s prosperity.
Her Un Certain Regard entry,
Strawberries
, centers on Moroccan fruit pickers in Spain and turns a spotlight on lives that reports indicate often remain hidden from public view. Marrakchi has described the system around them as a "sad form of new colonialism," framing the story not as distant social commentary but as a present-day power structure built on cheap labor, vulnerability and silence.“I want to show these women who are often not visible.”
That aim gives the film its force. Marrakchi links the daily reality of migrant work to broader patterns of abuse, including modern-day slavery, prostitution and the pressures exposed by the #MeToo movement. Rather than treating those issues as separate crises, she appears to connect them as parts of the same machinery: gendered exploitation sustained by economic dependence and social invisibility.
Key Facts
- Laïla Marrakchi discussed her film
Strawberries
in connection with Cannes. - The film appears in the Un Certain Regard section.
- Its story focuses on Moroccan fruit pickers working in Spain.
- Marrakchi says the film confronts modern-day slavery, prostitution and #MeToo-related issues.
The timing matters. Cannes often celebrates glamour, but it also gives filmmakers a global stage to challenge who gets seen and who gets ignored. Marrakchi uses that platform to redirect attention from red carpets to the women who harvest fruit under harsh conditions, suggesting that the comforts enjoyed elsewhere may rest on labor many people never acknowledge.
What happens next will determine whether