Outside views · Africa
10 Best Movies Set in or About Morocco
Put famous foreign images of Casablanca, desert travel, expatriation, and luxury beside films whose engagement with Morocco is sustained rather than ornamental.
Compare this list
Compare the route at a glance
Runtime, mood, and entry level help narrow the list without replacing the editorial ranking.
| Film | Runtime | Genre | Mood | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casablanca | 102 min | Drama · Romance | romantic · thoughtful · dark | first visit · film history |
| Babel | 143 min | Drama | thoughtful | first visit |
| Marrakech Express | 106 min | Comedy · Adventure | funny · dark · adventurous | a lighter route |
| Morocco | 92 min | Drama · Romance | romantic · thoughtful | shorter watch · film history |
| Greed in the Sun | 122 min | Action · Adventure · Comedy | funny · adventurous | first visit · a lighter route · film history |
| Le Grand Jeu | 110 min | Drama | thoughtful | film history |
| The Sheltering Sky | 138 min | Drama · Adventure | thoughtful · adventurous | character-driven drama |
| Our Man in Marrakesh | 92 min | Adventure · Comedy · Mystery | funny · adventurous | shorter watch · a lighter route · film history |
| The Forgiven | Not verified | Drama | thoughtful | character-driven drama |
| Hideous Kinky | Not verified | Drama | thoughtful · dreamlike | character-driven drama |
10 Movies Set in or About Morocco
Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Morocco.
-
1. Casablanca
In wartime Casablanca, a cynical American nightclub owner is thrown into turmoil when the woman who once broke his heart walks back into his life on the arm of a resistance hero seeking escape from the Nazis. The immortal romantic classic.
Details
- Runtime
- 102 min
- Genre
- Drama · Romance
- Mood
- romantic · thoughtful · dark
- Best for
- first visit · film history
Content notes: war or political violence
-
2. Babel
A single gunshot in the Moroccan desert ripples across the globe, entangling a vacationing American couple, a Moroccan family, a deaf Japanese teenager, and a Mexican nanny in a web of miscommunication and consequence. Alejandro González Iñárritu's sweeping mosaic.
Details
- Runtime
- 143 min
- Genre
- Drama
- Mood
- thoughtful
- Best for
- first visit
Content notes: substance use
-
3. Marrakech Express
Four old college friends reunite and set off across Italy and on to Marrakech to bail out a fifth friend arrested on drug charges in Morocco, rediscovering their bonds and their lost youth along the way. A warm Italian road comedy.
Details
- Runtime
- 106 min
- Genre
- Comedy · Adventure
- Mood
- funny · dark · adventurous
- Best for
- a lighter route
Content notes: war or political violence · substance use
-
4. Morocco
In a Moroccan garrison town, a world-weary cabaret singer and a womanizing Foreign Legionnaire fall into a fraught romance that pulls her between security and reckless devotion. Josef von Sternberg's smoldering drama starring Marlene Dietrich.
Details
- Runtime
- 92 min
- Genre
- Drama · Romance
- Mood
- romantic · thoughtful
- Best for
- shorter watch · film history
-
5. Greed in the Sun
A truck driver ventures into the Moroccan desert to recover a stolen rig, braving sabotage, bad luck, and shifting alliances on the way to a tense showdown. A rugged adventure caper.
Details
- Runtime
- 122 min
- Genre
- Action · Adventure · Comedy
- Mood
- funny · adventurous
- Best for
- first visit · a lighter route · film history
-
6. Le Grand Jeu
A ruined Parisian lawyer, driven to disgrace by a lavish mistress, flees into the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, where he encounters a woman uncannily like the one he left behind. A haunting romantic melodrama.
Details
- Runtime
- 110 min
- Genre
- Drama
- Mood
- thoughtful
- Best for
- film history
-
7. The Sheltering Sky
A sophisticated American couple travel deep into the North African desert hoping to repair their marriage, only to be overwhelmed by the vast, indifferent landscape. Bernardo Bertolucci's languid, sensuous adaptation of Paul Bowles.
Details
- Runtime
- 138 min
- Genre
- Drama · Adventure
- Mood
- thoughtful · adventurous
- Best for
- character-driven drama
-
8. Our Man in Marrakesh
Six strangers share a bus from Casablanca to Marrakech, and one of them is secretly carrying a fortune to bribe a UN vote — but no one knows which. A breezy comic spy caper.
Details
- Runtime
- 92 min
- Genre
- Adventure · Comedy · Mystery
- Mood
- funny · adventurous
- Best for
- shorter watch · a lighter route · film history
-
9. The Forgiven
A wealthy, bickering English couple driving to a decadent party in the Moroccan desert strike and kill a local boy, and the reckoning that follows forces a bitter confrontation with guilt, class, and consequence. A tense moral drama.
Details
- Genre
- Drama
- Mood
- thoughtful
- Best for
- character-driven drama
-
10. Hideous Kinky
In the early 1970s, a free-spirited young Englishwoman brings her two small daughters to Morocco in search of enlightenment and freedom, chasing a bohemian dream that tests her ability to care for them. A vivid drama from Esther Freud's novel.
Details
- Genre
- Drama
- Mood
- thoughtful · dreamlike
- Best for
- character-driven drama
Hear the country first
10 Best Moroccan Movies to Watch First
Follow postcolonial realism, urban life, migration, family, experimentation, and social critique in a cinema far richer than its role as an international location.
- Wechma 1970
- Alyam Alyam 1978
- Trances 1981
Selected by the FilmsAroundThe.World editorial desk
Selections require an outside creative lead and a story or subject substantially centered on Morocco. Decision labels are concise editorial aids, and content notes are non-exhaustive. Read the methodology.
Editorial review: 2026-07-14
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