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Sovereign Films has acquired U.K. and Ireland distribution rights to “Red Path,” the latest feature from Tunisian director Lotfi Achour, which competed for the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.

The film, set for theatrical release in the second or third quarter of 2025, centers on 13-year-old Achraf, who is forced into a gruesome and unimaginable act after his cousin Nizar is murdered by a group of men. Carrying the severed head of his cousin as a brutal message to his family, Achraf finds himself haunted by Nizar’s ghost. As his elders fail him, Achraf is torn between holding on to Nizar’s spirit and fulfilling his duty to recover his cousin’s body, while grappling with the overwhelming burden of grief and survival.

Achour, whose 2016 short “Law of Lamb” vied for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, drew inspiration from actual events. “This film is...

The Cairo Film Festival’s Cairo Film Connection co-production market spread the love at an award ceremony Sunday night, with 15 projects claiming 20 prizes in the Egyptian capital valued at some 225,000.

Among the standouts were Suzannah Mirghani’s “Cotton Queen” and “Lamp in the Dark,” from Sudanese filmmaker Mahdi El-Tayeb, which both took home awards from marketing and distribution outfit Mad Solutions for distribution in the Arab world with a 50,000 minimum guarantee.

Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan, “Cotton Queen” — which won the ArteKino Award at the Cannes Film Festival’s L’Atelier this year — follows a teenage girl as she begins to question cultural expectations and the collapsing cotton industry, under threat from both insect and human pests. “Lamp in the Dark” turns on a generational clash in a Sudanese village after the arrival of a mobile cinema.

No film won more than two prizes, with Amjad Al Rasheed...

The recent success of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight urban noir “Ashkal” from helmer Youssef Chebbi, and the 2021 international feature Oscar nomination for the provocative art world drama “The Man Who Sold His Skin” from director Kaouther Ben Hania reignited industry interest in projects from Tunisian directors. The Cairo Film Connection’s work-in-progress section supports this interest by offering the first Arab world look at “Red Path,” the second feature from Tunisian theater and cinema helmer Lotfi Achour (“Burning Hope”). The production is very different in style and genre from those of his aforementioned compatriots.

Inspired by real events and deeply rooted in a particular social context, “Red Path” is set in an extremely poor and isolated region of Tunisia’s northwest where, in 2015, terrorists attacked two young shepherds. They decapitated the older boy and commanded his younger cousin to bring the severed head back to the family as a gruesome message.