France’s Wrong Films, behind Sofia Alaoui’s Sundance Jury Prize winner “Animalia,” a sci-fi drama, is prepping another Arabic-language genre movie, David Arslanian’s feature debut “Thaoura,” which is set in Lebanon’s 2019 public protests against its worst economic crisis since 1850.
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“Thaoura” will be introduced by Wrong Films’ Mathilde Warisse to potential partners at the Locarno Film Festival’s Match Me!, which runs Aug. 9-11 at the Swiss film festival. Arslanian is currently writing the screenplay with Thomas Desenne, a scribe on Arte series “Le Somnambuliste,” who co-wrote Arslanian’s latest short, “Underdog” (“Charbon”), showcased at Unifrance’s MyFrenchFilmFestival in January with Arslanian and Ed Waguette. Desenne focused on the short’s narrative drive.
Wrong Films also produced “Bolero,” by France’s Nans Laborde-Jourdáa, which walked off with a Queer Palm, and Morad Mostafa’s “I Promise You Paradise,” which scooped a Cannes Festival Nikon Discovery Prize.
Aloui was born to a French mother and a Moroccan father and brought up for some years in China. Mostafa, 35, an Egyptian filmmaker, is currently developing his debut feature film, “Aisha Can’t Fly Away Anymore,” at the Cannes Festival’s Cinéfondation” Residency in Paris.
In the French-Lebanese Arslanian, who lives in Paris, Wrong Films taps into an on-the-rise director who draws on his cultural background to come into a stock genre, here a thriller, to deliver a compellingly different cultural and social perspective on a classic genre premise, as Variety wrote in its upbeat review of “Animalia.”
Showcased at Unifrance’s MyFrenchFilmFestival in January, Arslanian’s latest short, “Underdog” (“Charbon”)– about a cycle delivery worker racing against time over one night to earn enough at his job to pay his rent and avoid eviction – is a “social thriller,” Arslanian said in an interview when “Underdog” was showcased at 2024’s Unifrance MyFrenchFilmFestival.
“His films, using genre codes, place center stage main characters from the margins who are looking for their place and trying to emancipate themselves from their conditions in the hope of a better life,” noted in program notes Poland’s Krakow Film Festival, where “Underdog” world premiered in 2024 winning a Silver Dragon for best short and the Don Quixote Prize from the International Federation of Cine-Clubs. “Social cinema narrated with the zest of an action movie,” it added.
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The same most probably could be said of “Thoura.” In it, Manal, a 48-year-old schoolteacher, has to find medicine for her seriously ill sister. “An almost impossible mission in Lebanon, which is going through the biggest economic crisis in its history. And as street protests erupt over a new tax imposed by the government, Manal gradually plunges into a spiral of uncontrollable violence to achieve her ends,” the latest synopsis reads.
One scene – after the Lebanese government closed cash points to avoid a run on the banks, a real event in 2019 – catches Manal entering a bank in Beirut, pistol and jerrycan in hand, there to steal her own account, after her savings are blocked.
“This contemporary thriller confronts us with the impossible choices we have to make when we’re desperate,” Wrong Films producer Mathilde Warisse told Variety .
Wrong Films was founded in 2020. It is a “coincidence” that three of her most recent directors are French-Moroccan, Egyptian or French-Lebanese.
She would agree, however, with pundits who hail North Africa and the Middle East as two of the most exciting regions in the world in terms of new talent and new perspectives. “It means a lot that we are attracted by directors who are attached to these regions and their problems,” she told Variety .
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