COMMEDIA

Feature / Development Funding

Lebanon, Sweden \ Arabic, French \ 105 minutes

Director: Myriam El Hajj
Producer: Myriam Sassine
Production company: Abbout Productions
Swedish Co-producer: Olivier Guerpillon
Production company: Fox in the snow films

Synopsis:

Paris 2018; NOUR, a 30 years old Lebanese Commedia dell’arte comedian receives a phone call from her sister summoning her to return home immediately. MAKRAM, their father, an established politician, is in jail for being involved in a bomb attack, an enigmatic move that didn’t cause human casualties. Determined to save her father, Nour seeks to understand what drove him to this act. Her return awakens an old suspended love: NASSIB, a politician running for the first legislative elections happening in Lebanon in nine years. Nour discovers the roots of conflict of a corrupted country. Her investigation transforms into a quest that leads her to mourn over the ideal image she had created of her father and her lover. Connecting the dots between all the contradictions, Nour faces the present and can now embody the future.

Myriam El Hajj

Myriam el Hajj is a filmmaker and actress born in Beirut. She pursued her Master’s degree in Filmmaking and in Theatre in France. Her first feature documentary, TRÊVE (A time to Rest), premiered at Visions du Réel and received many awards including the prestigious “Prix Découverte de la SCAM”and the Special Jury Award in FIDADOC. Myriam teaches cinema at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. She is a member of several film commissions such as the CNC (French National Center), Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and SCAM. Myriam is actually developing her feature film “Commedia”.

Myriam Sassine

Myriam Sassine majored in cinema studies at ALBA and received a M.A. in cinema research. In 2013, she became a Producer at Abbout Productions working on several features and documentaries such as “Tramontane” by Vatche Boulghourjian (Cannes Critic’s Week 2016), “Panoptic” by Rana Eid (Locarno 2017), “Amal” by Mohamed Siam (Idfa 2017). Myriam is the COO of Schortcut Films that coproduces international films and the Director of MaskoonFFF, the first fantastic film festival in the Middle East.

Olivier Guerpillon

Olivier Guerpillon is a French-born Swedish producer and director. He has produced and co-produced a range of acclaimed and award-winning feature films such as “Sound of Noise” (Cannes 2010), “Broken Hill Blues” by Sofia Norlin (Berlinale 2014) and “Beyrouth Hotel” by Danielle Arbid (Locarno 2011).