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"    Jessica Chastain &amp;amp;amp; Forrest Whitaker at the Marrakech International Film Festival. Photo: Getty Images  You&amp;#039;d be hard pressed to find a woman as charming, passionate, smart and gorgeous as Melita Toscon du Plantier, the director of the Marrakech International Film Festival. Since the festival&amp;#039;s inception eleven years ago, Melita&amp;#039;s championed not just movies, but the city of Marrakech, something that proved especially difficult this year given the political temperature of the Middle East. &amp;quot;It was incredibly difficult this year to convince American people in particular to come,&amp;quot; Melita told us. &amp;quot;They were kind of scared. They wanted to wait, to see how Morocco was going be after Tunisia and Egypt, and I had to explain to them that here in Morocco it&amp;#039;s completely different and that everything is fine.&amp;quot; Indeed, the mood here is celebratory, the people are generous (almost to a fault) and the weather is practically perfect (70 degrees and sunny everyday). Last year&amp;#039;s festival was such a hit, with guests like Francis Ford Coppola and Susan Sarandon, that Melita wondered how she&amp;#039;d possibly top it. &amp;quot;One hundred and six actors and directors were out on the red carpet last year, and I thought &amp;quot;How am I going to survive this?&amp;quot; But the director&amp;#039;s prodigious charm won over a fresh slew of stars like Sigourney Weaver, Forrest Whitaker, Jessica Chastain and celebrated director Terry Gilliam. Melita&amp;#039;s most excited about Chastain, &amp;quot;I adore her. At the beginning, they said she couldn&amp;#039;t make it as she was shooting in Toronto, but she&amp;#039;s a big cinephile and had never been to Marrakech so she called back and told us she&amp;#039;d changed the date of her shooting in Toronto, got on a plane directly from Toronto and was on the red carpet almost as soon as she landed. She didn&amp;#039;t care about the so-called trouble in the region, she just really wanted to come.&amp;quot; As for next year, Melita&amp;#039;s already started planning the Bollywood-themed festival. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s going to be huge; we hope to bring in at least 20 of Bollywood&amp;#039;s best actors and directors to the festival,&amp;quot; Melita said. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to Bombay soon to meet with people for next year and I will be traveling to LA in February for the Oscars. I love being an ambassador for Marrakech. For me, it&amp;#039;s not a job, I have way too much fun for it to be considered that!&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a7919/the-marrakech-film-festival-kicks-off-in-morocco-33768/>