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Atlas Workshops Unveil New Films From Cherien Dabis, Lina Soualem, Marwan Hamed, Brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser
Framing a slew of bracing stories from multi-prized young filmmakers, the Workshops help explain the excitement around Arab, African cinema.
A revenge drama from brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser, “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” weighs in as the Workshop’s biggest co-production – between Palestine, France, Germany, Portugal, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – with Bac Films handling French distribution and international rights. A singular, upbeat and potentially highly cinematic road movie set in 1975 Morocco against stunning Atlas landscapes, as a young Vietnamese man called Ahmed Nour, arrives in Casablanca with a green truck, aiming to find his Moroccan father. A big period bio featuring star Mona Zaki as iconic Egyptian songstress Umm Kulthum who from the late 1920s became the first prominent Arab singer to disseminate her work to the masses via the new technologies of the times: radio, the phonograph, cinema and television.
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