Filmed in Marrakech, the series follows three childhood friends, played by Sofia Belkamel, Rita Berrada and Aouatefe Lahmani, with appearances by Siham Drissi, Rita Kassid and Mina Binebine. The three young women meet in the toilets of some of Marrakech’s best-known nightlife venues as they search for an attacker. The storyline unfolds over seven short episodes, ranging from 1 minute 30 seconds to three minutes, with two episodes released each week on Liik before the full series becomes available on YouTube.
Since its launch, the series has enjoyed strong success and has been selected for the 16th edition of the Marseille Web Fest in October 2026. Speaking to Le360, Sonia Terrab discussed the origins of a project that took nearly a decade to reach the screen.
The idea dates back to 2017, with her web series “Marokkiat,” in which the filmmaker approached women in the street and invited them to share an intimate story that reflected the Moroccan woman they had become. The testimonies, collected as the MeToo movement was emerging, reached millions of people online.
“Putting these women out there in the street was a way for them to reclaim this public space that did not belong to them. And posting the episodes on social media was also a way of reclaiming that space on the web, which is also extremely misogynistic,” Sonia Terrab explains.
After the street, the filmmaker wanted to continue exploring the web but turn her attention to a different space. She chose the toilets of bars and clubs at night.
“It is one of the few spaces of social mixing in Morocco. You meet girls there, laugh, exchange a joke or a lipstick. These are always moments that feel slightly outside of time, very precious, often very funny and sometimes very moving. There isn’t a girl I have asked about it who doesn’t have a story to tell,” she says.
She describes the space as a genuine safe place where women of all ages and social backgrounds cross paths, in a Morocco she describes as “very socially divided.”
For Sonia Terrab, Toilettes de filles is therefore a direct continuation of Marokkiat.
“I thought it was perfect: continuing in the spirit of Marokkiat and continuing to occupy the web, this time I would occupy the girls’ toilets at night,” she says.
The approach remains the same, but the setting has changed: from the public space of the street to the more intimate environment of nightclub and bar toilets.
Why fiction rather than documentary
The project took time to materialize, partly because social media had changed considerably in the meantime.
“Social media has become increasingly violent and increasingly misogynistic. It is becoming more difficult for women to take risks, and I didn’t want to put them in danger,” Terrab says.
Filming the space as a documentary, she believes, would have altered the very nature of a place that remains safe precisely because outsiders do not enter it.
“I didn’t want to be voyeuristic and enter with my camera. It wouldn’t have served either the women I was going to film or this place, which is sacred in its own way,” she says.
This led the filmmaker and her French producer, Claire Leproust, who previously produced El’Sardines, filmed in Algeria and broadcast on Arte, to turn the project into a short fiction series.
“We thought fiction and the short format might be a new way of doing things,” Terrab says.
A script written collectively by friends
The screenplay was written collectively with the three main actresses, who are friends in real life and were brought together for the project at Sofia Belkamel’s initiative. Terrab built the characters around their real personalities, including through improvisation during filming.
“Sofia really is an influencer in real life. She wanted to take that character to the extreme and parody it, to show how the ‘fake’ life of social media can be criticized,” the filmmaker explains.
Aouatefe Lahmani, a professional comedian, created a character who is deliberately prone to making up stories, but is also vulnerable and torn between two cultures.
“She is French-Moroccan. She has always struggled with having one foot on each side, not knowing how to speak Darija, feeling Moroccan in France and French in Morocco,” Terrab says.
Rita Berrada, a Paris-based professional who also acts, plays a woman fighting for her artistic ambitions while remaining constrained by family traditions.
“It is a way of showing a form of confinement while also showing a desire for emancipation,” Terrab says.
Rejecting misery, choosing celebration
The central storyline revolves around the search for an attacker, whose actual victim remains unknown until the end. But for Terrab, the investigation is deliberately only a pretext.
What interests her is what it reveals about the relationship between the three friends.
“There is a desire to expose toxic friendships between women. They don’t hesitate to take digs at each other or criticize one another behind their backs. But as soon as it comes to finding this attacker, they become very supportive of each other again. Solidarity takes over when faced with the dangers women encounter at night,” she explains.
Terrab also rejects the often-miserabilist portrayal of Maghreb women on screen.
“I wanted to film the night, the celebration, girls having fun. It is very rare to see that. Women can go through very complicated things and, at the same time, show resilience, laughter and joy, rather than always being shown in tears, violence or defeatism,” she says.
A format designed for the scrolling era
The format also went through several versions. Episodes initially ran for 13 minutes, then five, before Terrab and editor Zoé Liénard settled on two- to three-minute episodes.
“On social media, you need very short episodes that can be enjoyed like sweets,” Terrab says.
She points to the rise of micro-dramas from China, a format that is beginning to gain ground in Europe.
“We wanted to experiment with that in Morocco,” she says.
Terrab describes the project as a pioneering effort, acknowledging that audiences are not yet fully accustomed to this type of storytelling. Some viewers initially mistook the first episodes for simple trailers.
“They need to get used to an episode that tells a story, with characters and a narrative arc, in two or three minutes,” she says.
Despite that initial adjustment, the response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.
Terrab also wants to make clear that the series is not an adaptation of the stage play “À quel moment j’ai merdé?”, which has been performed since October 2025.
“We filmed in May 2025, before the play, and it has absolutely nothing to do with it. We have been developing the project for almost 10 years, and it has been fiction for three years,” she stresses.
Although some themes overlap, the two works were developed independently.
“It is great that two parallel and complementary projects are being created today. I hope there will be other concepts around this place, which is very important in the imagination and everyday lives of Moroccan women and women around the world,” she says.
Also known for Résister pour la paix, co-directed with Hanna Assouline, and for her first venture into fiction with Les Jardins du Paradis, selected for the International Francophone Film Festival of Namur and awarded at the Festival of African Cinema in Milan, Terrab sees the web as a way to continue promoting kindness and sisterhood in a space often saturated with misogynistic content.
“I want to continue making auteur cinema and films for festivals, but I also want to reach a wider audience, to keep saying important things and to exist outside the beaten path,” she concludes.
