Half a century of giving… Rawiya culminates in the Marrakesh Festival with a touching moment of loyalty

Moroccan artist Rawya has been experiencing an exceptional state of celebration recently, the culmination of an artistic career that has spanned nearly half a century, during which she presented more than fifty works that varied between theatre, cinema, and television drama, and contributed to drawing basic features of the time of Moroccan art in its golden phase.

There have been many stations honoring the artist recently, the most prominent of which was her honoring within the current session of the International Film Festival in Marrakesh, in a poignant human moment in which tears were mixed with ululations, singing and dancing, as an expression of the exceptional love that the public has for her for an artist of a special type.

Rawia, whose real name is Fatima Harandi, was born in 1951 in the coastal city of Azemmour. She attracted attention with her innate talent since childhood and adolescence, which prompted her to enter the world of theater forcefully in the 1970s, becoming one of its most prominent faces at that stage.

She revealed in media statements that she worked with the “Al Maamoura” and “Little Mask” bands, before she discovered the difficulty of securing life’s requirements from art alone, despite practicing it as a message and passion. So she went to work in a government job within the Ministry of Health, and she allocated part of her salary to support her theatrical participation.

At the beginning of the 1990s, she moved strongly into the world of cinema and television drama, and presented a group of the most prominent Moroccan works, including: “Casa Negra,” “Dry Eyes,” “A Mile in My Shoes,” “Mother’s Satisfaction,” “The Needs,” “Safia’s Handkerchief,” “Jibrout,” and “Dry Season.”

Rawya is considered a very special artistic case in the Moroccan scene, as she represents the voice of originality and a symbol of a generation that believes in the role of art as a tool for awareness, change, and spreading the values ​​of enlightenment, in addition to its entertainment function, which made her career carry a cultural and humanitarian dimension that goes beyond the limits of fame.