The 45th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, spanning November 13th to the 22nd, announced the selection of the film ‘Arzé’ to compete in the Horizons of Arab Cinema Section. The film, directed by Mira Shaib and starring Lebanese star Diamand Abou Abboud, had its world premiere at the 2024 Beijing International Film Festival. It also participated in the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, and was selected for competition by the Lebanese Ministry of Culture as Lebanon’s representative for the 2025 Oscar award for Best International Film.
The Egyptian-Lebanese film ‘Arzé’ is written by Louay Khreish and Faisal Sam Shaib, produced by Zeina Badran, from Spotless Mind Films, and executive producer Ali Al Arabi, from the production company Ambient Light Film. Over the past number of weeks, ‘Arzé’ has taken part in several festivals around the world, including the Lebanese Film Festival in Sydney, the Newport Beach Film Festival in California, the Lebanese Film Festival of France, the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, the Valencia Film Festival in Spain, and the Arab World Festival of Montreal. In November, it will be screened at the Asian World Film Festival in California.
The film follows Arzé, played by Diamond Abou Abboud, who lives in Beirut with her troubled older sister Layla and her teenage son Kinan. Single mother Arzé supports her family by selling homemade fatayer delivered by her son on foot. In a desperate attempt to save her business, she steals her sister’s cherished jewelry and pawns it to pay the down payment on a motorcycle to be used to make deliveries. Disaster strikes, however, when the bike is stolen, prompting Arzé and Kinan to embark on a journey across Beirut, the turbulent yet vibrant, multi-ethnic capital city, in search of the stolen vehicle.
Abou Abboud previously won the Best Actress Award at the Cairo International Film Festival in 2017, for her role in the film ‘In Syria’ by Belgian-French director Philippe Van Leeuw. Before that, she won the Best Actress Award at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival of 2017 in France.
‘Arzé’ is Abou Abboud’s third film to be selected for entry at the Oscars. This was preceded by the film ‘Waynun’ (2014), co-written with George Khabbaz, which ended up winning local and international awards for her stellar performance. The film won the Best Screenplay Award at the Malmö Arab Film Festival in Sweden, and she also won the Best Actress Award at the Dakhla Film Festival in Morocco. The film represented Lebanon in the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2015. She also starred in Ziad Doueiri’s film ‘The Insult’, which made it to the final Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language Film in 2018. For her role in it, she won the Francophone Cinema Award in Saint-Louis, Senegal, the same year.
Diamand’s latest role was in the Egyptian series ‘Sarab’ (2024), the first original work by TOD, produced by S Productions and directed by Ahmed Khaled. She also participated in the action film ‘Hassan Al Masry’ (2023) with Egyptian star Ahmed Hatem, produced by Misr International Films and producer Gaby Khoury, and directed by Samir Habchi. She was also one of the stars of the Netflix original film ‘Ashab Wa La A’az’ (2021), which is the Arabic version of the Italian film, ‘Perfect Strangers’.
