Hafid Abdelmoula (born 1975) is a Moroccan-American screenwriter, performer, director, actor, singer, producer, and filmmaker. He is best known for his work in Broken Gaiete, Captain Fantastic, The Wall in the Garden, and River.
Early life and education
Abdelmoula was born to M'barek Abdelmoula and Fatima Ouchad in Morocco. He completed his bachelor's in Film at New Mexico State University and an English Major at the University of Ibn Zohr Agadir, Morocco. He holds a master's in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Career
At the age of 20, Abdelmoula was a singer at the Moroccan Regional Orchestra Conservatory and an actor, writer, and director with a Moroccan theatre company. Abdelmoula won a 1996 television competition on the Moroccan 2M TV channel as a singer.
He moved to the US and directed short films, including the award-winning The Wall in the Garden, Human, a Depressed Machine, Baby, Religified and Restricted. In 2016, he appeared as a funeral driver in his first feature film Captain Fantastic.
In 2020, Abdelmoula wrote, directed, and produced the film Broken Gaiete, shot as his graduate-school thesis in his backyard in Picacho Hills and the Las Cruces desert, using a cast and crew from Las Cruces and El Paso. The film won Best Feature Film at the 2021 Santa Fe Film Festival and was nominated for Best Production Design at the Lonely Wolf London International Film Festival. Abdelmoula was awarded Best Director at the El Paso Film Festival, World Music and Independent Film Festival, and Madrid International Film Festival.
Abdelmoula hosts a podcast, HumaniTEA, with Mark Vasconcellos.
In January 2023, he was awarded a Rising Star in Film and Television of New Mexico by the New Mexico Film + TV Hall of Fame.