During the prize-giving ceremony, Mr Faiçal Laraichi, delegate president of the IFFM Foundation, expressed, in the name of HRH Prince Moulay Rachid, president of the Foundation, the warm thanks of the team working for the success of the 6th edition of the Marrakech festival for this honour "which comes to reward the important efforts made in order to make of the Marrakech festival a cinema event of an international dimension and a high place of culture, art, and show".

"It is a real privilege for me to see the Marrakech festival recognized and rewarded by the Maiori film festival association for its active commitment in the promotion of cinema, notably through the encouragement and support it gives to young students of filmmaking" he revealed.

He added that "today, we receive this prize with more emotion as it coincides with the edition of this festival celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini.

Within the same vein, Mr Laraichi underlined that Rossellini's work is reminiscent of his greatness, who when he "got involved in his cinema to show openly and without prejudice the reality of things, he put himself in an avant-garde position with respect to the period that allowed him to throw a renewed look at the differences between men".

"It is a profoundly humanist and tolerant look that he tries to promote and show in the backdrop of all his films" he said, noting that "when this philosophy crosses a cultural medium of a large diffusion like cinema, this produces Rossellini's work and gives birth to the Italian neorealist movement".

Mr Laraichi finally considered that the "promotion of our cultures by means of our cinemas, in the spirit of the integration of our cultures and peoples that characterized Rossellini's filmmaking, is the best means to reinforce our links and implant our mutual and genuine commitment to a cooperation that benefits everybody".

Furthermore, in a statement to the MAP, the president of the association of the Maiori film festival, Mr Gigi Ferrara, asserted that the association chose to reward the Marrakech International Film Festival, since it is "of the most important cinema festivals organised in the Mediterranean basin".

This prize rewards international cultural and artistic events through the recognition of their opening on other cultures and their contribution to the promotion of artistic and cultural exchange, he recalled.

On this same occasion, the Italian producer Raoul Bova, the Tunisian director Mohsen Melliti, and the Italian director Lamberto Lambertini were also rewarded.