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Robert De Niro talks Trump, politics and the Marrakech Film Festival
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# Robert De Niro On Trump, The Marrakech Film Festival And Art: ‘Creativity Comes From The Bottom Up’

Grace Banks
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Grace Banks edits across lifestyle covering fashion and culture.

Nov 1, 2023,01:27pm EDT

Updated Feb 13, 2024, 11:55am EST

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Robert De Niro at the "Killers Of The Flower Moon" Photocall at the 76th Annual Cannes Film Festival ... [+] (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

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As actors gather for November’s Marrakech International Film Festival with Scorsese as their Atlas Workshops partner, Robert De Niro talks about art, politics and why he decided to open a hotel in Marrakech.

Robert De Niro is notoriously hard to interview. He’s known for being late, dodging questions and turning up in a mellow mood, rather than ready to talk. But when we meet he’s ready to talk after a busy few months on the press junket circuit of his new film Killers of the Flower Moon(2023), his latest collaboration with Martin Scorsese about Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s and the Black Wall Street massacre in 1921.

When we talk De Niro is fresh from launching his latest venture, not a film but a destination – Nobu Marrakech, the first of his and co-partner Nobu San’s Nobu hotels in Morocco. Wedged between the city’s medina and the 1930s buildings of the Gueliz neighborhood, alongside chef Nobu San and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape film producer Meir Teper, De Niro’s lifestyle brand has become an institution, this latest launch will mark 36 locations across the world.

As the 20th Marrakech International Film Festival arrives in town from 24 November - 2 December, presided over this year by Jessica Chastain, De Niro is feeling talkative about at the merits of Moroccan filmmakers like Narjiss Nejjar and Nabil Ayouch, and is impressed by the film industry in the city. In 2018 Martin Scorsese presented an honorary tribute award to De Niro during the festival – for the 2023 edition, Scorsese will attend as the official patron of the Atlas Workshops, which work towards supporting the new generation of Moroccan and Arabic filmmakers. “I know that there's been a lot written about Marrakech, but the film industry here is really something – and not as many people know about it as they should. Morocco has a whole mystery about it, there’s something very beautiful and lyrical about it.”

US actor Robert De Niro poses next to a portrait of his father Robert Sr in an exhibition of Robert ... [+] De Niro Sr - paintings at La Piscine in Roubaix, France (Photo by Franck CRUSIAUX/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

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De Niro says that he’s always been drawn to the creativity in Marrakech, “extending Nobu to this city just made sense,” he says. The actor was brought up around art and creativity. His father, Robert De Niro Senior was a full time career artist, studying under Bauhaus artist and technician Josef Albers at the innovative Black Mountain College, North Carolina, from 1939 to 1941. De Niro Senior went on to work at the Museum of Non-Objective Art in New York, which later became the Guggenheim Museum. The young artist clashed with the Bauhaus dogma and became an expressionist painter, a surprising move for a time when the Bauhaus school’s influence heavily impacted art, culture and design. His father’s path both led to De Niro junior imitating his De Niro Senior’s ability to subvert creative trends, as well as to seek out art wherever he is. Of Marrakech, De Niro says, “I’d love to see the artwork that comes out of here from people on the street, if you will. That's always interesting.”

Robert De Niro with his business partner Nobu San in Marrakech, Morocco

Nobu

Cinéma Colisée in Nobu’s neighboring Gueliz and is one of the main locations for the Marrakech film festival. Located ten minutes outside the old town and historic medina, designed in 1953 by the architect Georges Peynet, it’s the centre of one of the most creative areas of Marrakech. This year the cinema will show films by Arabic and African directors including Stateless (2018) director Narjiss Nejjar and The Kaftan Blue (2022) director ​​Nabil Ayouch. For a decade and until 2019, De Niro ran the Robert De Niro Senior art prize in honor of his father’s art. After releasing a film about the murder and marginalization of one of America’s Osage Nation community, how important is it to De Niro to explore the oppressed cultures through film? “I think, to me, creativity comes from the bottom up, as opposed to being, you know a didactic thing. Creatively, I’m very open to everything.”

De Niro slips easily into talking about politics. During the Cannes Film Festival in May, he was outspoken about Donald Trump, a figure who the actor has regularly criticized, most recently during the Cannes Film Festival in a discussion of his film with Martin Scorsese Killers of the Flower Moon, in which he compared the killing of George Floyd in 2020 under Trump’s presidency to the Black Wall Street massacre – saying of the former president “that guy is stupid” and referring to his tenure as “the banality of evil”. Trump’s Muslim ban stopped people in multiple Islamic countries coming to America and increased Islamophobia in the US. “To not want to come to Morocco because of religious prejudiced bigoted opinion” he says of Marrakech, “it’s just absurd.”

De Niro now has a base in the city, his own suite at the Nobu Marrakech complete with his own entrance and views of the Atlas Mountains. As he assistant attempts to wrap up our interview, I ask if he’ll be visiting Morocco more often. “I’d love to spend more time at the [film] festival here, the arts are incredible in Marrakech. I can really feel the history of the country in the arts here and there’s still a lot I have to learn.”

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