Beirut-based Abbout Productions, led by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine, can be celebrated by the Locarno Film Festival with its Raimondo Rezzonico Award devoted to producers who epitomize the indie ethos.

Schoucair based Abbout Productions in 2004 with Sassine becoming a member of as lead producer in 2010. They’ve been nurturing a community of Lebanese and Arab filmmakers amid troublesome and infrequently catastrophic circumstances, combating to preserve indie cinema alive within the area by shepherding a variety of Arab and Lebanese function movies and launching them internationally.

Movies produced by Schoucair and Sassine lately embrace “Costa Brava, Lebanon” (Venice Orizzonti, 2021); “Reminiscence Field” (Berlinale Competitors, 2021) and different works by native filmmakers resembling Ahmad Ghossein, Mohamed Malas, Ghassan Salhab, Oualid Mouannes, Cyril Aris, Ely Dagher, Rana Eid and Myriam El Hajj, whose “Diaries From Lebanon” premiered in Berlinale Panorama in 2024.

Schoucair and Sassine have additionally co-produced a number of award-winning worldwide movies by way of their firm Schortcut Movies supporting administrators resembling Alain Gomis, Kaouther Ben Hania, Lucrecia Martel and Elia Suleiman, amongst others.

Schoucair has additionally been instrumental to the reopening final December of Beirut’s beloved Metropolis Cinema, championed by Lebanese filmmakers as an indie cinema beacon amid bombings, despair and dysfunction. Sassine is the co-founder of the Maskoon Incredible Film Festival, the Arab area’s solely style movie competition within the Arab area, and is actively engaged in movie coaching initiatives and trade occasions. Since 2021, she has managed Aflamuna Connection, a Lebanese co-production platform for Arab filmmakers.

“The movies Abbout have produced are an indication of a society that’s important, alive, and continues to look to the longer term with dogged confidence,” mentioned Locarno inventive director Giona A. Nazzaro in a press release.

“By way of their movies, Georges and Myriam have been ready to inform the story of a rustic ready to come to phrases with its historical past whereas concurrently imagining a layered and multifaceted Lebanese identification,” he added. “They’ve additionally launched a fantastic many new skills in entrance of and behind the digital camera, serving to to give Lebanon a brand new face, permitting it to meet its potential, and providing a posh portrait of the nation that goes far past the trivializations of the violence of warfare. They’ve labored tirelessly within the pursuit of a fertile and beneficiant dialogue.”

Schoucair and Sassine will obtain the Raimondo Rezzonico Award in Locarno’s 8,000 seat open-air Piazza Grande on Aug. 7. They may even be presenting “Costa Brava, Lebanon” by Mounia Akl and “Reminiscence Field” by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige as a part of a devoted mini-retro, and also will maintain a public dialog on Aug. 8.

Earlier winners of the Locarno award embrace French producer Marianne Slot and U.S. producers Jason Blum and Stacey Sher.

The 78th Locarno Film Festival will run Aug. 6-16.