Imichki means "the lost one" in Tachelhit. It names those who left and never returned, those who might have forgotten their land. This word was born of successive events that ran through the 20th-century in Morocco, from colonial and postcolonial times: forced recruitment of soldiers, laborers, rural exodus and then the countless brave dreamers who in turn decided to set out. These massive departures on the continent or across the sea fill villages with stories of "Imichki".

It was in pursuing these stories that I came across an oral poem, a timnadin from a distant time. It spoke of a woman who wished she could "be a letter, folded into her beloved's suitcase." I was struck by this simple and impossible desire. This image called up another imaginary in me. As I dug into the history of those who left, I crossed paths with those who had stayed behind. They spoke of absence with a modesty that moved me.

I found that desire is most intense in what fails to be said. I imagined how this woman hoped to find again the body she missed: by what path, by what gesture. By going for news, or seeking to meet him. It was perhaps by calling upon memories that she best managed to find him again. And through being called upon again and again, these memories transformed into fantasies until they came to inhabit the territory around her.

I wanted to imagine a film that would tell this territory through the eyes of a woman, Meriem, who still searches its landscapes for a presence.