The daughter of an Englishman from Gibraltar and an Andalusian woman, Juanita rejects the historical changes taking place in Tangier, finding herself increasingly alone in this “Paradise lost”, surrounded by her sister Elena, who was educated at the French Lycée and sought her freedom; Esther, her close Sepharad friend, who dedicates her entire life to an impossible love affair with a Moroccan, and Hamruch the loyal housemaid, the lifelong companion who disappears one day, leaving Juanita to discover that she never really knew the woman. All lives set against a background of historical events: the Spanish Civil War with the entrance of Jalifeña troops to Tangier, WWII, with the arrival of refugees from Europe, and the Moroccan independence finally returning the city to its Arab origins. Juanita’s tragedy lies in not realizing that her world is destined to disappear by the destructive and rejuvenating force of History.

Tangier (Morocco), 1948. She studied Cinema at the IDHEC in Paris, starting her professional career as a screenwriter and producer of several movies by Jilali Ferhati, going on to make her directorial debut with Bab al-samaa maftuh / Une porte sur le ciel (1988), screened in 2003 at San Sebastian as part of the “Amongst Friends and Neighbours” thematic retrospective. Her filmography is rounded off with the feature films Kaid al-nisaa / Ruses de femmes (1999) and Casablanca, Casablanca (2002).