The carpet outside the 2025 edition of the Marrakech International Film Festival was unfurled in its usual red, but the stars who walked across it shimmered in every color.
Actors and filmmakers drifted down its length in embroidered velvet robes and delicately cut black lace dresses, amid the sounds of camera shutters and microphones humming.
Some ensembles nodded explicitly to the region: hand-stitched caftans and robes with hems that followed the geometry of North African embroidery. Youssra, one of Egypt’s best-known actors, carried a black sequined, pearl-trimmed clutch emblazoned with her name across the front, recognizable to audiences all over the Middle East.
Others went crisp and relied on an austere palette of black and white to make their statement. And woven through were quiet gestures of political intent. Clutches patterned like keffiyehs, pins worn close to the heart — small but unmistakable signals of solidarity with Palestinians at a festival on the edge of a region in conflict.
The images that follow push past standard red-carpet fare, focusing on textures, silhouettes and accessories to show how style took shape at one of the Middle East and North Africa’s major film gatherings.
This year’s festival — whose guests included jury president Bong Joon Ho, Jafar Panahi and Anya Taylor-Joy — concluded Saturday.
