Soula Reaps Best Feature Fiction at Beirut International Women Film Festival

release date March 15 2022

Feature film Soula, by director Salah Issaad, just won Best Feature Fiction at the 5th Beirut International Women Film Festival, which concluded its events on Saturday, March 11th. This marks the film’s first award in its tour across the world’s festivals that started not long ago.

Most recently, the film landed its world premiere at Red Sea International Film Festival, and is expected to launch in the rest of the Arab world soon.

Soula is about a single mother who has nowhere to go after her father threw her out of the family home. Trying to make it through the night with her baby, Soula ends up hopping from one car to another with a number of people. Throughout a night full of unfortunate events along the roads of Algeria, Soula tries her best to change her destiny. Does fate have 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), and stars 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. Afterwards, 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 has under his belt a feature film and several short films, where he deployed his passion for telling stories that appreciates human relationships. He likes to explore different narrative forms and film genres like drama, tragedy, stories inspired by real events, as well as comedies.