Mark Kassen’s Tech-Driven Political Thriller ‘PH-1’ Boarded by Other Angle (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent French sales Other Angle (“Double Down South”) has boarded “PH-1,” a tech-driven political thriller starring Mark Kassen, Abubakar Salim, Dina Shihabi, Vinessa Shaw and Jesse L.

Martin. An actor-filmmaker, Kassen directed the movie from a script he co-wrote with Cheryl Guerriero and Brent Cote. Kassen produced the movie alongside Iliana Nikolic under his production banner Like Minded Entertainment. “PH-1” follows a politician with a promising future who is trapped in his luxurious penthouse by a remote captor and is forced to witness his life destroyed by social and conventional media.

He embarks on a journey to escape the premise while also struggling to uncover who framed him and why. An actor-turned-filmmaker, Kassen previously directed “Puncture” starring Chris Evans, and “Bernard and Doris” starring Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon for HBO, as well Evans’s “Before We Go.” Now completed, “PH-1” has a contemporary resonance, Kassen said, because “we are reliving the cultural landscape of the 1970’s.

Skepticism in our government, fear of manipulation by the media, racial inequality and ‘a rigged system.'” He described “PH-1” as a “a modern, dramatic political thriller that plays on the current zeitgeist of media and government.” The production also built a “technology ecosystem” with phones, screens, and TVs which were “triggered live, giving the performers the opportunity to interact with the media that was “controlling” their characters in real time.