Filmmaker and photographer Tala Hadid will premiere her new feature film, Bardi, at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 1, bringing Morocco’s centuries-old tbourida equestrian tradition to one of the United States’ leading film showcases.
The 109-minute film has been selected as the centerpiece of the Currents section at the festival’s 64th edition, scheduled to run from Sept. 25 through Oct. 12, 2026.
A co-production between Morocco, France and Qatar, with Moroccan producer Khadija Alami’s K Films among the production partners, Bardi takes viewers into the landscapes and communities of central Morocco.
Blending portraiture and fabulation, Hadid follows a group of horsemen and the world surrounding tbourida, the traditional Moroccan equestrian performance whose roots stretch back centuries.
The film marks the latest work in a career that has repeatedly drawn on Morocco, its landscapes and its communities while moving between fiction, documentary, photography and visual art.
From London to Marrakech
Born in London to Moroccan mother Kenza Alaoui and Iraqi father Foulath Hadid, a writer and Middle East specialist, Hadid has built a multidisciplinary career as a filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, photographer and author.
A graduate of Brown University, she later earned an MFA from Columbia University and now lives and works primarily in Marrakech.
Hadid is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served as a visiting professor in Harvard University’s Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies in 2025.
Her filmmaking career began with Sacred Poet, a documentary about Italian filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini.
In 2005, she directed the short film Your Dark Hair Ihsan, which won the Best Short Film award in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival as well as a Student Academy Award and several other prizes in Morocco and abroad.
Her first fiction feature, The Narrow Frame of Midnight, followed in 2014. Starring Khalid Abdalla as Zacharia, the film traces its protagonist’s journey through Morocco, Turkey and Iraq during the second Gulf War.
After its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film screened at New York’s Lincoln Center and at festivals in Rome and London. It later won the Grand Prix at the 16th National Film Festival in Tangier.
Hadid returned to documentary filmmaking with House in the Fields in 2017, an intimate portrait of women in an Amazigh community in Morocco. The film was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Glashütte Original Documentary Award.
A career spanning cinema and photography
Alongside filmmaking, Hadid has developed an extensive body of photographic and visual artwork.
Her work has been exhibited at major international institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Arab World Institute in Paris, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Smithsonian and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington.
Between 2010 and 2011, she developed Heterotopia, a photographic series documenting everyday life inside a New York brothel.
In 2013, Stern’s Fotografie Portfolio collection dedicated an edition to her work.
