The film will be released in five cities which are; Tangier on June 9 and 11, Rabat on June 12, 13, and 14, Kenitra on June 17, Casablanca on June 23 and 28, and Agadir on July 2.
UNDER THE CONCRETE took home the Jury Special award at Tripoli Film Festival and Saad Eldin Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film at Cairo International Film Festival. Moreover, it was featured in a number of international festivals, including Festival International du Film de La Roche-sur-Yon in France, Warsaw International Film Festival, Hainan Island International Film Festival in China, Malmo Arab Film Festival in Sweden, Toronto Arab Film Festival in Canada, and Coronado Island Film Festival in the US.
The film gained critical acclaim, with Cineurope website describing the director Roy Arida as “clearly has the makings of an excellent, fearless filmmaker whose potential we look forward to seeing deployed, buoyed by greater resources.”
The storyline revolves in Beirut, Lebanon. The city is riveted by a series of car bomb attacks. Alain, bored with his job as a sales representative, decides to turn his back on his life in this madness. Looking for a way out, he decides to devote himself to his passion, scuba diving. All of a sudden, he becomes increasingly obsessed with only one thing: breaking the world diving record.
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 Réchauffe 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. Under The Concrete is Arida's debut feature film as a filmmaker.
