UK Film Council to sign co-production deal with Morocco

Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, with its plot about a CIA operative who goes to Jordan to track down, was always going to be a hard sell in the Middle East. Scott had originally intended to shoot in Dubai, but permission was denied by the United Arab Emirates' National Media Council on the basis of the script.

In stepped Morocco, where an increasing number of UK and US films set in Muslim countries are being shot. Now a new co-production agreement with the UK Film Council could see the kingdom play an even greater role in future homegrown productions.

In support of the deal, which is expected to come into force in the first half of 2009, a raft of British stars including John Hurt, Gurinder Chadha, Charles Dance and Toby Jones are travelling to north Africa this week to attend the Marrakech film festival, which opened on Friday with the African premiere of Barry Levinson's new comedy What Just Happened? and runs until Saturday.

The agreement will give film-makers access to sources of funding and support in both countries and provide UK films with distribution networks in Morocco and elsewhere in north Africa. It is the eighth bilateral co-production treaty signed by the UK - previous agreements with Australia, Canada, India and Jamaica, among others, have led to the making of more than 400 co-production films in the last seven years, worth more than £1bn to the UK economy.

"This year the Marrakech international film festival has chosen to honour the UK by showcasing a British film for each of the past 40 years, taking in past and contemporary classics," says Isabel Davis, senior executive for international strategy and co-production at the UK Film Council. "A co-production treaty between Morocco and the UK is in the works which will encourage greater collaboration between the two film industries and increase the diversity of films being made."

In the past, Morocco has played host to such disparate productions as Orson Welles' 1952 Shakespeare adaptation The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice, the Kate Winslet drama Hideous Kinky and Ridley Scott's Gladiator.

Courtesy of http://www.guardian.co.uk