Under The Concrete Wins Saad Eldin Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film at Cairo International Film Festival

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Within its Arab World Premiere

Under The Concrete Wins Saad Eldin Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film at Cairo International Film Festival


Landing its Arab World Premiere at the 42 nd Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), Lebanese film Under The Concrete by director Roy Arida has won Saad Eldin Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film within the Horizons of Arab Cinema competition. The award was handed to the film’s director, Roy Arida, at the Cairo Opera House.

Set in Beirut, Lebanon, the film follows a series of car bombs that explode across the country, where Alain, a 32-year-old man, decides to turn his back on this deleterious situation to attempt to break the world record of deep diving.

Under The Concrete participated in a number of international festivals, including Festival International du Film de La Roche-sur-Yon in France and Warsaw International Film Festival. It is also slated to participate in the next edition of Hainan International Film Festival in December.

Written and directed by Roy Arida and produced by Stank, the film stars Alain Najm, Nathalie Japiot, Toufic Khreich, Ralph Choueiri, Elie Lteif, Rony Khoueiry and Roland Najm. The film is distributed in the Arab world by MAD Solutions, while Indie Sales handles its distribution outside the Arab region.

Born in Beirut, Roy Arida studied cinema at La Fémis, Paris, in the directing department. In 2009, he made his directorial debut, La Chaleur des Autres ne Rechauffe Pas. Ever since his graduation in 2011 he has been working between Paris and Beirut with an equal interest for both fiction and documentary films. In 2012, he co-founded STANK as a film production company based in France.