We have families, responsibilities. We have to be realistic and go beyond the stage of a craft to an industry. Attia has attempted to do this himself by seeking a number of small backers for his films instead of one large backer who might usurp his ideas. The Maghrib has some 800 film theaters in a population of about 60 million, yet directors and critics alike decry the lack of a local market, which is flooded with foreign films. According to Rosen, Algeria imported 140 films in 1987, Tunisia imported 165, and Morocco imported 362 films in 1986.
Television has also drained away theater audiences, the directors complain.
Each of the three countries presents a distinctive climate for its filmmakers. In Algeria a state monopoly controls the industry, Tunisia is a mix of public and private, and in Morocco filmmaking is almost elusively in the private sector. The same organization that produces Algerian films also controls the number of Western films shown in Algeria, so there is a kind of coherent balance that does not exist in the other countries. Algeria already had a modern cinema by the mid-1960s. The agrarian changes of 1971 ushered in a new genre of Algerian films that focused on agriculture.