Le Petit Prince

I fondly remember reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince in 8th grade, imagining all the planets and places the prince visited. I had quite the imagination for history, geography, and exploration from a young age. So, naturally, when I had the opportunity to watch the film, Le Petit Prince, in Tangier at the Cinematheque de Tanger, Cinema RIF, I jumped at it!

The ticket office! If you look closely, you can see Le Petit Prince listed as one of the Films du Jour

Cinema RIF is a refurbished 1938 movie theatre which opened in 2006 with the goal of preserving and promoting the cinema of Morocco and the Arab world. While this cinema typically shows local Moroccan and African films, we happened to be there during European Film Week which offered us the opportunity to see The Little Prince in French. Tickets were only 25 Dirham, which translates to roughly $2.50! Who could pass up this experience? :)

Somewhere inside the medina in Tangier

The lighthouse at Cap Spartel

Before we discovered the cinematheque, I had spent the entire day exploring Tangier with Liz and Laurens, my Morocco travel buddies. We took the overnight sleeper train from Marrakech and got an early start by hiring a taxi to visit the Grottes d'Hercules (the Cave of Hercules) and the lighthouse at Cape Spartel, then walked through the medina all afternoon seeing the sights. By mid afternoon, we were sitting in the Place du 9 Avril 1947 and trying to figure out what we wanted to do that evening. Having noticed the marquee at Cinema RIF in the center of the plaza, we were interested in possibly seeing a film after dinner. We decided to check out the showtimes since Liz's guidebook even recommended the cinema as a point of interest in Tangier. We were not disappointed once we discovered that Le Petit Prince was a film that was showing in a few hours. The film wasn't even listed on the marquee, and honestly, I didn't even know what kind of film it would be. I had heard that there was a huge movie adaptation of the book coming to theatres at some point in time, but I didn't think this would be it. I mean, tickets were so cheap, and art house cinemas like this didn't exactly show mainstream movies very often. But we were excited! Especially since Liz was reading another of Saint-Exupery's books on this trip. Not to mention the fact that it was The Little Prince! The story on it's own is such a classic tale, and I knew that anything that had to do with the book would be worth consuming.

It turned out that the film we saw was indeed the Paramount Pictures stop-motion film that has yet to be released in the United States! Le Petit Prince debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last May and was released in France last year, but the U.S. release date is March 18, 2016. Even though it was all in French (not to mention the fact that my one semester of college French was not enough to completely understand what was going on at all times), it was a thrilling experience to see such an amazing, beautiful film in Morocco months ahead of time. And for only $2.50! I love attending festivals like Sundance and watching films whenever I can, so this just goes to show that it pays to follow your intuition and do what you want to do when you travel! Initially, the cinema sounded great, although it seemed a little odd to be watching a movie in Morocco when I could do the same thing in the U.S. But it was definitely not the same! And we were rewarded for taking a second to look into the cinema there. It's kind of like how I avoided drinking Fanta in Europe when I first visited, only to discover that European Fanta is FAR superior to Fanta in the US! Things are never what they appear to be when you travel. And I absolutely love it!

Inside the Cinema RIF waiting for the film to begin! :)