Soula Joins Beirut International Women Film Festival

release date March 01 2022

Salah Issaad’s Soula will be featured during the fifth edition of Beirut International Women Film Festival (BWFF) (6-11 March), marking the film's second stop following its global debut at Red Sea International Film Festival at the end of last year.
Following its premiere, the film earned widespread critical acclaim, with film critic Tarek El Shinnawi calling it as “a woman's cry out, and the leading actress's performance was striking.”
Soula is the story of a single mother whose father expelled her, leaving her homeless with her baby. Soula finds herself going from one car to another with other people while looking for a safe location to stay the night. Throughout a night full of unfortunate events along the roads of Algeria, Soula tries her best to change her destiny, but fate has another saying
Written, directed, and produced by Salah Issaad, Soula is co-written by Soula Bahri, whose life story inspired the director to turn it into a film and let Soula play the lead role. The film is produced by Issaad Film Productions (the three brothers Taqi Eldin, Abdelghafour, and Salah Issaad). The film starring Soula Bahri, Idir Benaibouche, and Franck Yvrai. MAD Solutions handles the film’s marketing and distribution in the Arab world.
Salah Issaad is an Algerian director who was raised in a family of publishers. After receiving a bachelor's degree (High school degree) in Letters and Foreign languages in 2008, he joined the Law school of Batna in Algeria. He moved to France to complete his film studies for two years at the University of Paris VIII. Afterward, he joined the ARFIS audiovisual school in Lyon, then he ended up joining the Factory School in Villeurbanne, where he obtained his Cinema director diploma.
Salah directed a feature film and several short films, where his passion motivates him to tell stories that appreciate human relationships. Moreover, he likes to explore different narrative forms and film genres like drama, tragedy, stories inspired by real events, as well as comedies.
Beirut International Women Film Festival is an annual event hosted in Beirut that brings together filmmakers and moviegoers from all over the world. The festival focuses on problems of gender equality and women's individual identities. Through the lens of cinema, it also explores many types of domestic abuse of women.