Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki's CGI film Bouchra explores queer coming out through anthropomorphic coyotes

New York-based artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki premiered their CGI-animated feature Bouchra at the New York Film Festival on 27 September. The film centers on anthropomorphic coyotes representing a mother and daughter, voiced by Bennani and Yto Barrada respectively, examining the nine-year silence following the daughter's coming out. Through a blend of live-action, photogrammetry, and 3D scanning, the narrative shifts between Casablanca family visits and New York romantic dalliances. Storyboards expand into flashbacks that question memory's reliability, blurring boundaries between reality, fantasy, and recollection. The work extends autofictional traditions of queer diasporic filmmakers like Chantal Akerman and Kaori Oda, presenting coming out as an ongoing process rather than a singular event. Bouchra originated from conversations between Bennani and her own mother, continuing the stylistic approach of their 2020 lockdown project 2 Lizards. The film's cinematography focuses on incidental fragments—like a cousin's furry feet in oversized wedges—echoing how memory crystallizes details while broader scenes fade. Mother Aicha's isolation emerges when she reveals she cannot discuss her daughter's queerness with extended family, fearing disruption to the heteronormative unit.