For the second time, Lebanese star Diamand Abu Abboud won the Best Actress award at the Cairo International Film Festival, where the jury of the Arab Cinema Horizons competition announced her victory for her performance in the film Arze, directed by Mira Shaib. Diamand had previously won the same award in 2017 for her role in the film In Syria, directed by Belgian-French director Philippe Van Leeuw.
Arze also won the Youssef Sherif Rizkallah Award for Best Screenplay in the Arab Cinema Horizons competition. This award came just one day after the confirmation by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that the film was accepted to represent Lebanon in the 2025 Academy Award race for Best International Feature Film.
The film tells the story of Arze (Diamand Abu Abboud), who lives in Beirut with her mentally disturbed older sister and her teenage son, Kinan. Arze supports her family by selling homemade pies, which Kinan delivers on foot. In a desperate attempt to save her business, she steals her sister’s cherished bracelet and pawns it to pay the down payment for a motorcycle to help with deliveries. However, disaster strikes when the motorcycle is stolen, and Arze and Kinan embark on a journey to find the stolen bike across the troubled yet vibrant, multi-ethnic city of Beirut.
Arze had its world premiere at the 2024 Beijing International Film Festival and was also showcased at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
The film was written by Louay Khreish and Faisal Sam Shaib, produced by Zeina Badran (Spotless Mind Films), and co-produced by Ali Al-Arabi (Ambient Light Film). Over the past few weeks, Arze participated in several film festivals around the world, including the Lebanese Film Festival in Sydney, the Newport Beach Film Festival in California, the Lebanese Film Festival in Paris, the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, the Valencia Film Festival in Spain, the Arab World Film Festival in Montreal, and the World Asian Film Festival in California.
Arze is Diamand’s third film heading toward the Oscars, following Wenene (2014), for which she won several local and international awards for her performance. She also co-wrote the screenplay with George Khbeiz. The film won Best Screenplay at the Malmö Arab Film Festival in Sweden, and Diamand received the Best Actress award at the Dakhla Film Festival in Morocco. It represented Lebanon for the Best Foreign Film category at the 2015 Academy Awards. She also participated in the film The Insult (Case No. 23), directed by Ziad Doueiri, which reached the final nominations for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Diamand won the Francophone Cinema Award at the Saint-Louis Film Festival in Senegal the same year.
