Other masterclasses to be held by Dumont, Gray, Kiarostami and philosopher Debray.

The 13th Marrakech International Film Festival (Nov 29-Dec 7) has announced the directors who will conduct this year’s masterclasses.

The first masterclass, on Dec 1, will be held by French director and screenwriter Bruno Dumont whose Camille Claudel 1915 played in competition at this year’s Berlinale.

Dumont is currently finishing P’tit Quinquin, a police miniseries for the Franco-German channel Arte.

US director, screenwriter and producer James Gray will host the next masterclass on Dec 2. This year, Gray directed Cannes competition title The Immigrant and produced Guillaume Canet’s Blood Ties. He will preside over the international jury at the Rome Film Festival this month.

The following day (Dec 3), Iran director and screenwriter Abbas Kiarostami will share his memories and thoughts about film.

His credits include Taste of Cherry, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1997, and The Wind Will Carry Us, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice in 1999. His most recent feature, Like Someone In Love, played in competition at Cannes in 2012.

Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director, screenwriter and producer behind Drive and Only God Forgives, will be next to host a masterclass on Dec 4.

Refn, who won best director in Cannes for Drive in 2011 and screened Only God Forgives in competition at this year’s Cannes, is currently working on his latest project, I Walk With The Dead, coproduced by Wild Bunch and Gaumont. He is also working with Gaumont on developing a TV adaptation of Barbarella.

The final masterclass on Dec 5 will be held by Régis Debray, a French philosopher, journalist, former government official and academic known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Che Guevara in Bolivia.

It follows last year’s masterclass with sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher Edgar Morin, who introduced the festival’s first philosophical forum on cinema.

Marrakech introduced its masterclass strand in 2007 and have included Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Emir Kusturica, the Dardennes and Francis Ford Coppola among others.

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