Hiam Abbas, who played Marcia Roy in HBO’s “Succession,” and Tunisian-Egyptian star Hend Sabri (“Four Daughters,” “Finding Ola”) are set to star in “Your Turn, 203,” a social comedy set in a battered Beirut. Abbas plays a housewife named Aida who replies to a casting call for extras to make ends meet.
“Your Turn, 203,” which is a working title, is to be directed by Lebanese filmmaker Cynthia Sawma, making her feature film debut after working as a casting director on major Arab films, including Nadine Labaki’s “Capernaum,” and subsequently making several award-winning shorts. Lebanon’s Abbout Prods. and France’s Wheelhouse Prods. are lead-producing, with Mohamed Hefzy’s Film Clinic, Gianluca Chakra’s Front Row and Lebanese producer Antoine Khelife also on board.
Abbout Prods. chief Georges Schoucair and Sawma will be in Cannes to meet with their production partners.
The Party Film Sales will be handling international distribution on the film.
“Your Turn, 203” is set in 2023 Beirut when Lebanon is the throes of financial collapse. Aida and her husband are struggling after he has loses his job as a private chauffeur. “In addition to the frequent electricity cuts and her growing boredom as a housewife whose kids have left the nest, Aida can now no longer pay the bills,” says the synopsis.
Through a fortuitous turn of events she intersects with Saydeh, played by Sabry, who works as an extra and helps enroll Aida in a casting agency for extras called Paradise. This, in turn, leads Aida to bond with new girlfriends and push back on her increasingly grumpy husband “as she redefines the limits Beirut society had set for her,” the synopsis adds.
“What makes ‘Your Turn, 203’ particularly timely now is that, because of the war, everybody feels like a pawn or that they are playing an extra in their own life,” said Schoucair, referring to the ongoing war between Israel and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is currently under a ceasefire. “But the film is really about the female condition,” he added.
The plan is to shoot “Your Turn, 203” in Beirut in October, in hopes that by then at the very least “the ceasefire will become permanent,” or that the war will end, Schoucair said.
