Smail Mojahid

BurnOut is a film about the grinding down of hope by the contradictory values and morals of Moroccan society and how a mere chance encounter can throw everything that is taken for granted as normal and correct into question once one has glimpsed the possibility of the love and companionship that lies just beyond the walls of the Moroccan society. A shoe shiner Ayoub, a bourgeois couple, Jad and Ines in a loveless marriage, a wealthy but ailing art collector, and a young medical student Aida moonlighting as an escort, each interaction forever changing them and setting them on an irreversible trajectory towards catharsis or total collapse.

A forest and wildlife enthusiast, Aqqa became the best hunter in his region at an early age. His wide-ranging knowledge of the forest is matched only by his immutable sense of freedom. Attempts to domesticate this wild soul turned him into a bloodthirsty bandit. With his gang, he sowed terror throughout the 1990s. The legend of Boulouhouch spreads throughout the country, presenting him as a mythical being with superhuman powers who had to be taken down in an increasingly modernized and rationalized Morocco. The film explores the fall of a man in search of freedom in a green far-west; the Atlas Mountains.