The First Arabic Netflix film is finally coming this January.
Perfect Strangers, a star-studded remake of the hugely-popular Italian hit of the same name, will release January 20, 2022 on the streaming platform.
The film unites an all-star Pan-Arab cast, including Oscar-nominee Nadine Labaki, Egyptian star Mona Zaki, Eyad Nassar, Georges Khabbaz, Adel Karam, Fouad Yammine and Diamand Abou Abboud.
The film is directed by Wissam Smayra, who previously produced the Nadine Labaki-directed film Capernaum, which is the highest-grossing Middle Eastern film of all time. With Perfect Strangers, Smayra makes his debut as a film director.
“Nadine and I are very, very old friends. We started our careers together. We’re very close, like family. She was the first person I thought of. I knew Nadine would be amazing in the main role. It was a natural fit,” Smayra told me last year before production.
The film, which has already been adapted into many other languages across the world, has a simple but intriguing premise, diving into the secret life that each of us has on our mobile phones. In the film, a group of friends at a dinner party decide to put their phones in the middle of the table, and any incoming messages or calls will be made public—revealing truths that none of them are ready to share.
For the Arabic-language version, the film will pull from Arabic culture first and foremost, and the lives—both public and secret—that people live in the region.
“I think it’s great because it really plays with the taboos of our culture, revealing what’s hidden inside each of the people you know,” Smayra told me.
The film is produced by the Dubai-based Front Row Filmed Entertainment along with Egypt’s Film Clinic, Lebanon’s Empire Entertainment and Yalla Yalla, a joint-venture between Front Row and Rocket Science.
Here’s the official description from Netflix:
Dinner with friends is supposed to be an intimate, social moment. One where we should disconnect from our phones, and enjoy each other’s company. But what if we did the opposite?
What if our dinner entertainment was, in fact, to share everything, including our phones and what is on them, indiscriminately? Are we prepared to reveal all to those whom we say are our closest friends and partners?
“Perfect Strangers”, the first Arabic Netflix film based on the smash-hit Italian feature, tells the story of seven close friends who get together for dinner and decide to play a game that involves them placing their cell phones on the dinner table, and agreeing to openly share every call, text and voice message as it comes. What starts out as fun, quickly unfolds into an uncharted path of untold secrets that reveals more than what they wish to share.