El Mahdi Lyoubi is a Moroccan filmmaker born in Salé in 1992. He studied audiovisual arts in Rabat before working as a photographer and cameraman for online media. He began his artistic career by writing rap lyrics, which soon found fuller expression through visual storytelling. Drawn by his interest in politics and social movements in Morocco, El Mahdi pursued documentary filmmaking through a program at the University of Aix-Marseille from 2017 to 2020. He then attended La Fémis Summer School, where he directed the short film Qui Font Le Zbeul? which premiered at the Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris in 2020. Since 2019, he has been developing his first feature film, Foug Selk.