2019 has been an excellent year for films from Africa and the Middle East, with a higher presence in A-list festivals, and kudos for films such as Mati Diop’s “Atlantics,” which won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
The “new wave” of Arab and African cinema includes a small group of films that explore links with genre cinema – including fantasy, sci-fi and horror – which is related to a broader trend in literature and the contemporary arts in the Arab world that is exploring dystopias and fantasy settings.
Lamia Chraibi, a leading producer of daring films from the Middle East and North Africa region, is developing a pan-Arab genre series, “Meskoun,” with Moroccan filmmaker Hicham Lasri (“Jahilya”) as showrunner, in coproduction with Mohamed Hefzy’s Film Clinic (Egypt), Georges Schoucair’s Abbout Productions (Lebanon) and Habib Attia’s Cinetelefilms (Tunisia).
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