Gardens of Fez is a long-term research and film project that centers on the walled gardens in the Medina, the old city of Fez in Morocco.
This research unfolded a cartography of spaces and practices linked through the stories and memories of the people I met in Fez about the disappearing gardens of the city. Drawing on the notion of heterotopia as drafted by Michel Foucault, the research Gardens of Fez explores the interplay of different dimensions of a shared reality as it used to be. Therefore, the garden exists as a space in between, allowing moving from the site to the subjectivities that inhabit(ed) it.
Over the years, the film developed in different stages and comprises a rich constellation of stories, film fragments, publications, and exhibitions, culminating in 2025 in the single-screen documentary Gardens of Fez.
Genre: Documentary
Length: 50 min
Language: Moroccan Arabic, French
Available subtitles: English, French, Japanese
Production: Otherwise film, near/by film
Website: gardensoffezfilm.com
About the artist
Heidi Vogels (1978, NL) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Amsterdam, where she studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Her practice unfolds through long-term research into the garden as a layered and heterotopic space – a place that connects nature and culture, the domestic and the public and the tangible and the imagined.
