Beirut-based Abbout Productions, led by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine, will receive Locarno Film Festival’s producing prize, the Raimondo Rezzonico Award, at its upcoming 78th edition, which runs August 6-16.
Schoucair and Sassine will also present two of their films, Costa Brava, Lebanon by Mounia Akl and Memory Box by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, at the festival.
Schoucair took over as CEO of Abbout Productions in 2004, with Sassine joining as lead producer in 2010. They have since shepherded an array of Arab and Lebanese feature films into existence and onto the international distribution marketplace.
In recent years, Schoucair and Sassine have produced films such as Costa Brava, Lebanon (Venice Orizzonti, 2021), Memory Box (Berlinale Competition, 2021), and works by local filmmakers such as Ahmad Ghossein, Mohamed Malas, Ghassan Salhab, Oualid Mouannes, Cyril Aris, Ely Dagher, Rana Eid and Myriam El Hajj, whose Diaries From Lebanon premiered in Berlinale Panorama in 2024.
Schoucair also played a pivotal role in opening, and then reopening, Beirut’s Metropolis Cinema, a key industry and programming hub for the MENA region.
Sassine co-founded Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival, the only genre film festival in the Arab region, and is actively engaged in film training initiatives and industry events. Since 2021, she has managed Aflamuna Connection, a Lebanese co-production platform for Arab filmmakers.
They will be given the Raimondo Rezzonico Award on the night of August 7, and the next day will also take part in a public conversation at the festival.
The Raimondo Rezzonico Award was created in 2002 in memory of the president of the festival from 1981 to 1999. Recent winners include French producer Marianne Slot and US producers Jason Blum and Stacey Sher.
Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of Locarno, said: “The films Abbout have produced are a sign of a society that is vital, alive, and continues to look to the future with dogged confidence. Through their films, Georges and Myriam have been able to tell the story of a country able to come to terms with its history while simultaneously imagining a layered and multifaceted Lebanese identity. They have also launched a great many new talents in front of and behind the camera, helping to give Lebanon a new face, allowing it to meet its potential, and offering a complex portrait of the country that goes far beyond the trivializations of the violence of war. They have worked tirelessly in the pursuit of a fertile and generous dialogue.”
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