Three years ago, Japanese director Shô Miyake enjoyed an arthouse breakthrough with his gorgeous, unconventionally delicate boxing movie “Small, Slow But Steady”; two features later, that title looks more and more like an announcement of Miyake’s own filmmaking credo. All three adjectives apply to his latest, “Two Seasons, Two Strangers,” though it’s more jagged and peculiar than that description might imply on its own. Playfully reorienting the viewer as it shifts from a contemplative film-within-a-film — depicting a fleeting connection between two strangers in a seaside village — to the equally low-key reality of that film’s shy, adventure-seeking writer, it’s a tale light on incident but rich, per its title, in doublings, parallels and reflective surfaces, layered to entrancing, cumulatively moving effect.
A deserving winner of the top prize in the main competition at the Locarno Film Festival — a boon to the distribution prospects of this unassuming mood piece — “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” is adapted by Miyake from “Mr. Ben and His Igloo” and “A View of the Seaside,” two short 1960s works by revered manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge. The director and his DP Yuta Tsukinaga honor the material’s original form with their crisp, panel-like Academy-ratio framing, while the disconnect between the two sources is deftly built into Miyake’s own script, which opens on Li (Shim Eun Kyung), a Korean writer based in Japan, making a rudimentary start to a screenplay: “Summer, seaside. A car at a dead end.”
From there, we’re immersed into the sparse story she’s writing, following two young loners — Natsuo (Mansaku Takada) and Nagisa (Yuumi Kawai) — at respectively loose ends in a sleepy coastal town where he’s visiting family and she’s just idly visiting, each nursing their own sadness. There’s a late-summer air of exhaustion to the place, where the threshing of strong winds through lush foliage vies with the dull roar of the ocean for prominence in Takamitsu Kawai’s intricate sound design, while Tsukinaga paints in brilliant, pregnant blues, present in everything from sky and sea to Nagisa’s chic, flimsy wrap dress and the undertone of the characters’ skin on an unseasonally cool day. And that’s before the strangers, having tentatively met on a deserted cove, go for a sensually saturated swim in a heavy rainstorm, the camera bobbing with them in the rowdy waves.
“When people have too much free time, they think about things too much and get depressed,” says Natsuo to Nagisa — better, perhaps, to act rashly and often, and reap the sensory benefits. With this observation, it would seem, Li is speaking through her characters: Depressive and adrift herself, she’s both creatively blocked and at risk of becoming a passive observer in her own life. At a Q&A following a screening of the film we’ve just dipped into, she dodges questions by flatly denying she any talent; later, asked what she’s working on next, she admits a planned script about ninjas has come to a halt. “The things and feelings that used to be fresh have been been overtaken by words,” she says. “I’m in a cage of words.”
What Li needs is the kind of journey on which she sets her characters, short on words and long on unfamiliar environs and feelings. With one graceful cut to black, several months pass; we emerge from darkness out of a railway tunnel on a train slicing through the brilliant white landscape of Japan’s snow country in midwinter. Deposited at a small tourist town, Li finds much to snap with the camera she now devotedly carries everywhere, but no free hotel rooms; she’s directed up the hill to a rustic, off-the-radar inn run by taciturn divorcé Benzo (Shinichi Tsutsumi). He turns out to be something of a kindred spirit, likewise awaiting a new chapter in a life he’s let run aground.
Their tentative bonding is the less sexy, more specifically wounded version of the brief encounter Li wrote in the film’s first half. Creative fires are gently stoked; personal balance is restored. Miyake has a wonderful eye and ear for small, perfect details of everyday serenity: Steam rises off a bowl of udon noodles slurped in silence one frosty afternoon, while snow gives way underfoot with a pleasingly muffled crunch and grumble. Cages of words are unlocked with a look, a nod or the settled stance of a cat in the window. “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” revels in the kinds of experiences that most storytellers wouldn’t deem remarkable, though it unassumingly articulates what can be life-changing, or even life-saving, about them.
“King Khan” ruled the Piazza Grande, the iconic big square in the center of picturesque Swiss town Locarno, on Saturday night. Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan brought his global star power to the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival as he was honored with a lifetime achievement award, the so-called Pardo alla Carriera, or Career Leopard.
The fans, including those in the 8,000 seats on the square and more in various spots around it, gave the star of films like Panthaan,Don 2 and Om Shanti Om a rousing ovation and thunderous applause. Even when the big movie screen in the square first showed him arriving on the red carpet around 9:20 p.m. local time and shaking hands with Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, a roar went through the crowd.
Just before 10 p.m., the screen showed a highlight video of many of Khan’s films, which drew constant cheers and other ecstatic reactions.
Just minutes later, the star took to the stage to be showered in cheers, applause and screams of “I love you!” He received his honorary Golden Leopard award from Nazarro and thanked him and the evening’s host, Sandy Altermatt, who is also known for her work as a Swiss TV host.
Khan shared with the audience how heavy the award was, drawing laughs. Sweating due to the hot weather, he also told the excited crowd that he was happy to be in Locarno in a square full of people, and he was honored to be in Locarno, a “very beautiful, very cultural, very artistic and extremely hot city with so many people stuffed up in a little square and so hot.” He then joked: “It’s just like being home in India.”
He also thanked the crowd, saying: “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you all for welcoming me with such wide arms — wider than the ones I do onscreen.” He stretched out his arms to cheers. And he added: “I love you all.”
Khan kept showing his entertainer side onstage, promising to give a more serious speech. “It’s the Locarno Film Festival. We all need to sound intellectual,” he quipped before saying a few words in Italian for his fans in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. “The food has been nice. My Italian is improving — so has been my cooking,” he added before explaining. “For those who don’t understand Italian, it means I can cook pasta and pizza.”
On a more serious note, the mega-star said: “I truly believe cinema has been the most profound and influential artistic medium of our age. I’ve had the privilege of being part of this for many years, and this journey has taught me a few lessons I’d like to share with you.” Among them was, “that art is the act of affirming life above all.”
Khan later expressed his gratitude for his career and fans and drew more laughs, saying: “For 35 years, I’ve been working. I’ve been a villain. I’ve been a champ. I’ve been a superhero. I’ve been a zero. I’ve been a detective fan, and I’ve been a very, very resilient lover.”
After flashing a smile amid cheers, the actor concluded: “I normally don’t go out for occasions like this. I don’t know how to relate to people, how to talk to them. I just know how to act a little bit — not too much.”
As part of the Locarno tribute, the festival is also screening Khan’s 2002 hit Devdas from director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, in which the star plays an alcoholic.
The 58-year-old has been a box office draw and ambassador for Indian cinema since breakthrough performances in such movies as Baazigar (1993) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). He also earned praise for his portrayal of a man with Asperger’s Syndrome in My Name Is Khan (2010), among others.
Last year, he starred in three blockbuster films — Pathaan, Jawan and Dunki. According to some estimates, action-thriller Jawan, directed by Atlee Kumar, became the highest-grossing Hindi film of all time with close to $140 million.
Locarno organizers said the award pays tribute “to his remarkable career in Indian cinema, consisting of more than 100 films in a breathtaking multitude of genres.”
Nazzaro previously told TheHollywood Reporter that “Shah Rukh Khan is the quintessential power of cinema.” He compared the star to the “popular glamor of a hero of the working class, like Marcello Mastroianni,” combined with “the arrogant elegance of someone like Alain Delo.” He concluded: “In Shah Ruhk Khan, I can see the trajectory from Rudolph Valentino to Tom Cruise, and it’s all there in one person.”
The presentation of the award to Khan was followed by the world premiere of Mexico 86, the new film from Guatemalan director César Díaz (Our Mothers). It stars Bérénice Béjo (The Artist) as a Guatemalan rebel fighting against the military dictatorship and having to leave her son behind.
During the first few minutes of the film, Khan’s fans, who were crowded around the far end of the red carpet away from the square, could still be heard chanting “Shah Rukh Khan!” and cheering.
The 77th Locarno Film Festival runs through Aug. 17.
Tim Blake Nelson is about to shoot a “spectacular” Western “Shoot” in Spain, directed by Guillermo Navarro. Guillermo Del Toro’s regular cinematographer, he already won an Academy Award for “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
“We have a great cast and a script written by British writer Ian Wilson. Westerns change, reflecting a cultural moment when it’s made. ‘Yellowstone,’ ‘Power of the Dog’… each generation needs to furnish its own take on film genres. This one is about the power of the gun as a corrupting force,” he reveals.
“It’s absolutely a current script, but it’s 100% true to its time. We are starting to shoot in November. The great thing about Westerns is that they require big vistas, but good Westerns don’t have to cost $100 million. We made ‘Old Henry’ for $1.2 million. It’s a way of having a superhero film with natural environments and no visual effects.”
There will be no avoiding visual effects in “Captain America: Brave New World,” however, where Nelson will finally reprise his role of Samuel Sterns following 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk.”
“I deeply, deeply grieved over the prospect of not being able to come back into the MCU. All I wanted to do, as an actor, was to figure out what happens to this guy. 18 years later I got to do it and I wasn’t disappointed,” he said.
“It was a great challenge and I was guided beautifully by Julius Onah, who’s an indie director. These are real directors who want to work with real actors and give them opportunities to play outlandish characters. Marvel supports that.”
Despite some recent voices to the contrary, prematurely predicting its demise, according to Nelson, one should never “count Marvel out.”
“Marvel is an unheard-of phenomenon in movie history. Kevin Feige and his studio created dozens of connected movies that exist in one cinematic universe, to use their term. There’s no comparable achievement. So no – I don’t think it’s over,” he notes, calling “Captain America” “the most grounded” of MCU franchises – along with “Logan.”
“This is going to be a wonderful movie,” he insists.
“I couldn’t respect Martin Scorsese more, he’s his own genre, but I disagree with him when he derides Marvel. I come down on the side of Marvel movies absolutely being cinema. They return us to being kids again. When they are really good, and they often are, you lose yourself in them. Are they profound? Are they ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Miller’s Crossing,’ are they ‘Bicycle Thieves,’ ‘Schindler’s List’ or Kieślowski? No, but they aren’t aspiring to be. They are entertainment and there’s artistry involved in them.”
“That’s my Marvel speech.”
Nelson – currently at Locarno as a juror – is not forgetting his indie roots anytime soon, presenting intimate drama “Bang Bang” at the Swiss fest out of competition. Directed by Vincent Grashaw, it sees him as retired boxer Bernard “Bang Bang” Rozyski, determined to right past wrongs.
Randomix Productions, Traverse Media produce, with Red Barn Films co-producing.
“It demanded of me what no other role has, both in terms of its physicality and its mindset. In a sense, I am a fighter too – if you do what I do, you have to be – but I am not a confrontational person and this character is. It’s a guy who keeps himself in a fighting form. I have no background as a boxer, so I did some pretty extensive training.”
After observing Daniel-Day Lewis on the set of “Lincoln,” he doesn’t mind preparing for roles.
“Working with Daniel did change my approach to what it is that I do and I’m hardly unique in that regard. You get better just by being around him. I almost wanted to take all these 17-year-old roles I’ve done before and do them all over again,” he laughed.
“I don’t do what he does: if I were to try to stay in character all day, it would be exhausting. He’s extraordinary in that regard – I’m not. At the same time, another wonderful actor, John C. Reilly, told me that every part is a ‘custom job.’ It’s this combination of developing a durable process for yourself and being open to changing it based on the part.”
In “Bang Bang,” he gets his very own “I coulda been a contender” speech a la Brando in “On the Waterfront.”
“I love that scene. He discusses, effectively, what occurred that made him amount to the wreck of a man that he is. I have to give all the credit to Will Janowitz, the writer. It’s a speech that doesn’t feel like a speech. What a spectacular moment for an actor to play.”
Over the course of his career, he got a couple of moments like that.
“One was ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?,’ of course. Another – ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.’ When they said: ‘Come back to the MCU’ and when Damon Lindelof asked me to play Looking Glass in ‘Watchmen’,” he recalled.
“As actors, we are often limited by ourselves and our own shortcomings, by how the industry and public perceive us. I’ve been given roles that asked for goofiness, imbecility, outlandishness. And quite infrequently, if ever, restraint. Suddenly, I was offered a character who was all about restraint. He only shares what he has to share. I look at ‘Watchmen’ the same way I look at Nolan’s ‘Batman’ movies. You enter this world and never want to leave.”
He’s also readying to direct his next feature this year – his first since 2015’s “Anesthesia.”
“The grandfather of it all was Cassavetes, but there’s certainly more tolerance for actors who direct. With ‘O,’ I resisted doing it. All these teen Shakespeare adaptations were proliferating at that time and I didn’t want to add to it, because I love Shakespeare. But it was a tragedy set in a high-school, not a comedy, and instead of it being repellent, it was an opportunity to make a statement about what was, and still is, going on with guns at schools in America.”
A modern adaptation of “Othello, “O” featured Julia Stiles, Mekhi Phifer and Josh Hartnett.
“The movie did strike a chord. Actually, it struck a bit too loud of a chord. As we were editing, Columbine happened. The movie was shelved and came out a year later. Shakespeare wrote about antisemitism, about racism. These issues endure, sadly,” he notes. But movies shouldn’t try to please everybody. Even now, when the future of indie cinema is seemingly under threat.
“Once films start trying to be ‘liked,’ we are in trouble. In ‘Bang Bang,’ this character is borderline unlikeable. The trick was about making sure the audience wants to see what he does next. The Coen brothers’ movies are not trying to be liked. ‘The Big Lebowski’? There’s violence, you have the ashes of Jeff Bridges’ best friend blowing back into his face… I mean,” he says.
“Here’s what I know: there’s an appetite for arthouse films in America. What’s missing is an ability for the platforms to make money off them. With Apple, for example, you could go to their ‘Movies’ icon and find ‘Independent Films’ and ‘Recent Discoveries.’ They have now folded that into Apple TV+, so they can foreground their own material. Another answer is to make the arthouse experience more special. You have places like Alamo Drafthouse – the movie I made with my son [Henry Nelson], ‘Asleep in My Palm,’ sold out there for a week. We need arthouse cinema in every major American city. And I need to be in great films and make great films.”
The Locarno Film Festival, taking place in the picturesque town in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, always shines a light on arthouse voices, whether new or established. And it showcases Swiss films worth audiences’ attention.
That will be the case again during Locarno77, taking place Aug. 7-17, soon after Switzerland also took center stage at the 2024 Cannes Film Market where the Alpine nation was the country of honor.
Among the Swiss fare featured at Locarno this year are such Cannes hits as Laetitia Dosch’s Dog on Trial, and Swiss animator Claude Barras’ Savages, which are screening in the Piazza Grande lineup along with the world premiere of Swiss director Simon Jaquemet’s Electric Child, the international premiere of U.S.-Swiss filmmaker Freddy Macdonald’sSew Torn and the Swiss premiere of Swiss-Peruvian filmmaker Klaudia Reynicke’s Reinas.
Meanwhile, Locarno’s international competition includes the Swiss entry Der Spatz im Kamin (The Sparrow in the Chimney) from Ramon Zürcher. And there is more Swiss involvement to be found elsewhere in the program.
Importantly, Locarno is also again presenting “Panorama Suisse,” which, as the festival website explains, “presents 10 current Swiss films, such as festival successes, audience favorites and films that have not yet been released in theaters.” They are selected by a committee of representatives from the Solothurn Film Festival, the Swiss Film Academy, and Swiss Films.
Locarno organizers’ promise: “Film lovers from all over the world can thus find a taste of contemporary Swiss cinema at the Locarno Film Festival through a hand-picked section of significant titles.”
So if you want to avoid having Swiss cheese-like holes in your Locarno schedule and ensure at least a bit of Swiss bliss, check out THR‘s look at seven of the Swiss films screening at Locarno77 below.
Bergfahrt – Reise zu den Riesen (Mountain Ride), directed by Dominique Margot, Panorama Suisse section
What is more Swiss than snowy mountains? Well, in the age of climate change of peak tourism, this may have to be rephrased to “not always snowy mountains.”
The nature and environmental documentary already got distribution in Switzerland and Germany, with Maximage handling world sales. And it debuted at the Solothurner Filmtage in Switzerland in January before hitting DOK.fest München in Munich this May.
“After years of mass tourism in the Alps, a rethinking is slowly taking place,” highlights a description of the film. “Whether researchers, artists or philosophers: Many are trying to approach the nature of the mountains in new ways. They reflect the contrasting approaches at this critical time, when we need to redefine our learnt values and actively seek change.”
Margot has made a name for herself as a documentarian. Among her previous films are 2020’s Zoom on Circus (“With the COVID-19 pandemic, circus artists are unemployed, shows are canceled and many companies go bankrupt, including the famous Cirque du Soleil. By Zoom or by Skype, they share with us their daily life) and 2016’s Looking Like My Mother, which followed the filmmaker’s journey as the daughter of a mother who suffered from depression and confronts her fear of inheriting it.
Der Spatz im Kamin (The Sparrow in the Chimney), directed by Ramon Zürcher, international competition
The cast of the German-language feature, for which Cercamon is handling world sales, includes Maren Eggert (I’m Your Man) as Karen, Britta Hammelstein as Jule (The Baader Meinhof Complex), and Andreas Döhler (All Quiet on the Western Front) as Markus, among others.
Written, directed and edited by Zürcher (The Girl and the Spider, The Strange Little Cat), the filmmaker’s latest outing seems to follow a similarly contained formula as his previous features with brother Silvan, which were set in the confines of an apartment. It also continues his run of movie titles that include animals.
“Karen and Markus live with their kids in Karen’s childhood home, nestled in the countryside. On Markus’ birthday, Karen’s sister Jule arrives with her family,” according to the plot description. So far, so good, but here we go. “The sisters are complete opposites. Haunted by memories of their late mother, Jule feels driven to challenge Karen’s authority. As the house fills up, Karen’s tension grows until everything explodes into a fiery inferno. An inferno that destroys the old to make way for the new.”
It all sounds like the perfect set-up for the distinctive Zürcher storytelling language for which the filmmaker has earned a reputation. For his new film, he is also responsible for the sound design together with Peter Von Siebenthal.
Reinas (Queens), directed by Klaudia Reynicke, Piazza Grande program
If the title sounds familiar, you may have heard about the movie, the director’s third feature, when it premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January, followed in February by its inclusion in the Generation section of the Berlin International Film Festival. There, it won the Grand Prix for the best film in the Generation Kplus section.
The family drama, set in 1992 during a tumultuous time in Lima, Peru, centers on two teenage sisters who are about to leave their country forever when they unexpectedly reconnect with their absent father. THR‘s review called it “an understated portrait of a Peruvian family navigating political turmoil.”
Directed and co-written by Reynicke, the movie stars Jimena Lindo, Gonzalo Molina, Luana Vega,Abril Gjurinovic, and Susi Sánchez. The filmmaker has become a Locarno regular. Her debut feature Il Nido (2016) competed at Locarno where her follow-up Love Me Tender (2019) also screened.
The Landscape and the Fury, directed by Nicole Vögele, Panoroma Suisse section
If the enticing title of Vögele’s documentary doesn’t tempt you, maybe its topic, namely borderlands full of tension, does.
It is a deep dive into the border region between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina where vast forests and small villages can be found along the 932-kilometer-long border. After all, Vögele spent years there observing how the past, including the wars in the former Yugoslavia (1991-2001) and the Bosnian War (1992–1995), still affects the present.
“A cinematographic essay that centers around the region of the Bosnian-Croatian border near Velika Kladuša, and explores questions of displacement, violence and also everyday life and coincidence,” a description of the film calls the result. “It is about scars that break open, war memories that are awakened, profound encounters between people. A kaleidoscope of landscape and fury.”
Taskovski Films is handling world sales rights for the latest from Vögele, who studied journalism and documentary filmmaking. Her debut feature doc from 2018, Closing Time, debuted at Locarno and won the special jury prize of the Cineasti del presente competition. “Mr. Kuo and his wife Mrs. Lin cook for the city’s sleepless. They work all night and sleep during the day, like many others in buzzing Taipei,” its description said. “Until one morning, riding back from the market, Mr. Kuo takes a different exit on the highway.”
Hanami, directed by Denise Fernandes, Concorso Cineasti del Presente section (which puts the spotlight on first and second features)
Fernandes is a writer and director who was born in Lisbon in 1990, the child of Cape Verdean parents, and raised in Switzerland.
Her debut feature, co-written with Telmo Churro, is a Switzerland-Portugal-Cape Verde co-production, with world sales being handled by Alina Film. The movie gets its world premiere at Locarno, with a cast including Yuta Nakano, Alice Da Luz, Sanaya Andrade, and Nha Nha Rodrigues.
‘Hanami’
Courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
The story is described this way: “On a remote volcanic island that everybody wants to leave, little Nana learns to stay. Her mother, Nia, went into exile right after she was born, and Nana grows up in the family of her father. One day, the family learns that Nia is ill … and is sent to the foot of a volcano for treatment. There she encounters a world steeped in magical realism, between dreams and reality. Later, when Nana is a teenager, her mother Nia finally returns to the island.”
Die Anhörung (The Hearing), directed by Lisa Gerig, Panorama Suisse section
The documentary, for which Rise and Shine World Sales handles world sales, has won awards at the Solothurner Filmtage early this year and the Swiss Film Awards, which honored it as the best documentary of 2024.
The film takes us inside the experiences of four rejected asylum seekers who “relive the hearing on their reasons for fleeing their home countries,” a description says, hinting at the emotional dimension of the doc. “Will the interviewees be able to describe their traumatic experiences in a way that satisfies the official criteria? For the first time, the film provides insight into this sensitive hearing, thus questioning the asylum procedure itself.”
The Hearing is the debut feature-length doc from Gerig, who studied film in Zurich and Geneva, majoring in editing. But its topic is not new to her. After all, Gerig’s thesis film is described as “a radically subjective look at the situation of people held in Zurich’s deportation detention center.”
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, directed by Elene Naveriani, Panorama Suisse section
Speaking of Swiss Film Awards winners… Naveriani, who was born in Georgia but now lives in Switzerland and also brought her previous feature, Wet Sand, to Locarno in 2021, had much success at the big Swiss film ceremony this year.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, her drama about a single woman in her 40s who lives in a small town in Georgia and has an affair that triggers an existential awakening, won the best feature film, best screenplay, and best editing honors. It also won the top prize for best film at the 2023 Sarajevo International Film Festival. In addition, star Eka Chavleishvili won the best actress honor at that fest.
The Switzerland-Georgia co-production, which the director co-wrote with several others, has already sold to various European countries, with Totem Films handling world sales duties. But Locarno77 will give film fans another chance to see this movie and a few more Swiss standouts.
Pan-Arab distributor Mad Solutions has picked up international rights to Tunisian auteur Ala Eddine Slim’s mystery drama “Agora” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Locarno Film Festival.
The film revolves around three missing people who suddenly return to a remote town in Tunisia, prompting tensions within their families and community. A local police inspector named Fathi tries to unravel the mystery of their initial disappearance and unexpected return with the help of her friend Amine. Then, a second inspector arrives from the capital. The somewhat supernatural film’s events unfold as if they were taking place in the dreams of two animals – a blue dog and a black crow – as the director has put it in an interview with Variety.
Slim’s two previous works, both featuring minimal dialogue and atmospheric images, garnered significant critical acclaim: “The Last of Us” (2016) won the Lion of the Future Prize at Venice. “Tlamess” (2019) was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. “Tlamess” was subsequently released by Mad Solution’s Mad Distribution unit across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
“Agora” will also be distributed theatrically throughout the Arab world via Mad Distribution, while Mad World – the company’s recently established international sales arm – will be handling sales to distributors in the rest of the world.
The “Agora” cast comprises Neji Kanaweti (“Who Do I Belong To”); Bilel Slatnia (“Dachra”); Majd Mastoura (“Hedi”) and emerging Tunisian talent Sonia Zarg Ayouna.
A coproduction between French producer Julie Viez’s Cinenovo and Slim’s Exit Productions, the film received funding from various entities including the Tunisian National Center for Cinema and Image, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund, and Qatar’s Doha Film Institute.
Mad Solutions’s two co-founders, Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab said in a statement they were “excited to bring to the international market a very promising investigative drama that promises to be engaging to the last minute.”
