Film Clinic, Front Row, Arabia Pictures & Rotana Team On Jeddah-Set Rom-Com ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ With Sarah Taibah & Yaqoub Alfarhan

deadline.com:

Long-time collaborators Cairo-based Film Clinic and Dubai-based Front Row Productions are joining forces with Saudi Arabian companies Arabia Pictures Group and Rotana Studios to produce local rom-com A Matter of Life and Death.

The Jeddah-shot feature will revolve around the romance between two unconventional characters: Hayat, a superstitious young woman who is convinced she’s cursed, and Yousef, a shy heart surgeon dealing with a bafflingly slow heartbeat.

Their fates collide as she is wishing for an end, while he is wrestling with even darker thoughts. The feature will be directed by Anas Ba-Tahaf, whose 2021 drama Fay’s Palette, about a girl cloistered in her home by a controlling brother, was one of the first Saudi features to be made following the lifting of the country’s 35-year cinema ban in 2017.

Writer and actor Sarah Taibah, who took co-writing credits on Saudi fantasy drama Hwjn, is lead writer. She and Ba-Tahaf previously collaborated on the hit TV series Jameel Jeddan, in which she also starred as a girl who wakes up from a coma after five years.