EXCLUSIVE: Saudi romantic comedy A Matter Of Life And Death world premieres at the Red Sea Film Festival this coming week, and Deadline can reveal the first teaser.
Local stars Yaqoub Alfarhan (Scales, Norah) and Sarah Taibah (Mandoob) play an unlikely couple whose love blossoms against the odds in the Jeddah-set feature, one of the quirkiest local romantic comedies to come out of Saudi Arabia since the lifting of its 35-year cinema ban in 2017.
Taibah plays Hayat, a superstitious young woman who is convinced she is cursed, opposite Yaqoub as Youssef, a shy doctor with a heart condition that causes him to suppress his emotions.
In the backdrop, Hayat is struggling to break free of her overbearing aunts. She finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Youssef, with their shared existential struggles bringing them closer.
A Matter Of Life And Death is the second feature from Jeddah-based Yemeni director Anas Ba-Tahaf, who made waves with his equally quirky 2021 first feature Fay’s Palette.
The melodrama about a girl cloistered in her home by a controlling brother, played in the inaugural edition of the Red Sea Film Festival in 2021 as one of the first productions to come out of Saudi Arabia in the wake of the lifting of the cinema ban.
Taibah and Ba-Tahaf are long-time collaborators, with the actress appearing in Fay’s Palette, and co-writing TV series Jameel Jeddan, in which she also starred as a girl who wakes up from a coma after five years.
First announced at the Red Sea Film Festival last year, A Matter Of Life & Death is produced by Cairo-based Film Clinic and Dubai-based Front Row Productions in partnership with Saudi Arabian companies Arabia Pictures Group and Rotana Studios
