Lebanese director Sarah Francis submitted her quietly shocking marital drama Dead Dog to the Cairo Film Festival’s Arab Film Horizon competition, where it won the Saad El-Din Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film. When I met Francis ahead of the closing ceremony, the film’s impact, anchored by intimate performances from Chiline Calame and Nida Wakim, was already making ripples throughout the festival.
The project was an unexpected artistic re-entry for Karame, who had been away from acting for years. She later won the Best Actress award at the Next Generation Awards, which was presented at the closing ceremony of Cairo Industry Days.
Karame told Variety how Frances’ vision brought her back to the spaceship she thought she had left behind. “There was always a quiet place deep inside me that told me that something was still waiting for me. When I found out the project was with Sarah, something immediately changed.”
“Dead Dog” is produced by Lala Abou Saifan and the team at Placeless Films, whose early efforts helped create the film’s stripped-down emotional world, Francis said. MAD Distribution will handle the film’s sales to the Arab world, and MAD World will oversee global distribution. The film premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and then toured to São Paulo, Sarajevo, and Cairo.
Below, Francis speaks to Variety about how he constructed the film’s vulnerable emotional terrain, making the transition from hybrid to fiction, and the collaborative process behind “Dead Dog.”
You have a hybrid and documentary background. What was the impetus for “Dead Dog”? Also, why do we talk about it as fiction?
I hardly understand how ideas begin. Sometimes it’s an image, sometimes it’s a scene. The film begins with two people who know each other meeting in a kind of transitional space, a temporary time. I wanted to explore the misunderstandings and misunderstandings between them, and as I followed those threads, Aida and Walid’s story unfolded.
The two meet over four days at the mountain house he inherited from his parents, but it is a mostly half-derelict place that is not actually lived in. I was interested in working with very minimal elements: two people, one location, one specific slice of time. And at the same time, certain objects, such as photographs or letters, open windows to other moments in their relationship. It becomes like a constellation at the moment of connection.
Has the shift from a hybrid format to fiction allowed you to explore things you weren’t able to do before?
In fiction, you suddenly have a whole architecture that needs to be built: wardrobe, camera selection, shot list, and many other practical questions. Some were very clear to me in my head, while others were completely new to me. Working with the actors was also difficult, but very interesting.
Even with all this preparation, you’re still faced with the realities of the moment, such as what the actors will bring, the mood of the scene that day, and even the weather. In a sense, it became like a documentary again. Observe what’s happening in front of you, feel what’s important, decide what you can let go of, and follow the threads that emerge.
Immigration shapes the distance between Aida and Walid. Why did you decide to root the story in that particular Lebanese reality?
It wasn’t something I started out with, but as I developed the character, it felt obvious that Walid was going to be part of that reality. Immigration has been common in Lebanon for more than a century, before and during the civil war, and after every crisis, and today the diaspora outnumbers the country’s population. Often men go out alone and return only occasionally.
In other words, Walid is someone who is not fully established anywhere. He doesn’t have a permanent home abroad, but he can’t easily go back because he’s not sure where he’ll go back. Meanwhile, Aida has overcome Lebanon’s hardships alone, raising her daughter, juggling daily life, and enduring constant instability. Naturally, they each have their own set of disappointments and expectations that were not met.
But what really interested me was not immigration as a subject, but the emotional space it created. They are both in transition, looking for a center in their relationship and themselves. Nothing feels set in stone: feelings, decisions, even the security of marriage that was once promised. That uncertainty became the core of the film.
Although the relationship between Aida and Walid is close, it feels like there is a rift. How did you work with the actors to build that emotional history?
Since they both live overseas, they arrived a few weeks before filming for rehearsals. That time was essential. We didn’t just read the script, we had a lot of conversations before the movie started about who these two are, why they got married, what each of them expected, what their disappointments were, and what they were dealing with in this moment. We developed a kind of shared history together, but at the same time each actor developed their own private backstories as well. I think that combination gave the characters a rich inner life.
There were also moments where they really disagreed on certain things, especially when it came to gender roles and expectations. They, like the characters, sometimes had different views in real life. That dynamic blended naturally into their scenes and made the tension between Aida and Walid feel very true.
By the time we started filming, each actor had formed a very specific “truth” about who their character was. This actually helped me a lot, even though these truths don’t always match perfectly at any given moment. Friction, misunderstandings, and tenderness all arose from a perspective they had completely internalized. The acting felt natural because they were acting from a place they built and believed in.
Silence plays a huge role in the film, both emotionally and structurally. How did you decide when dialogue was needed and when silence could say more?
Originally the script had more lines, but in rehearsals and filming we always ran every scene from scratch, even if it was just a single line adjustment. The actors had a rhythm together, and I could really tell that the scene was already defined through their looks, body language, and the way they moved through the space.
Sound and music were also essential. We worked with sound designer Victor Bresse to create a very minimalistic yet impactful world around the characters. And with the original music by Rabbi Gebeile, it felt like he wasn’t repeating the emotions of the film, but adding a complementary layer of telling the story in a different tone, almost like a narrator with his own voice.
Cairo is a major platform for Arab filmmakers. What did it mean to you to screen Dead Dog at Horizon of the Arab Film Competition, and what did you hope regional audiences would take away from it?
We were all so excited to be able to go to Cairo with this film because it really is a film hub and has such a rich history. Shirine (Aida), Lara (producer) and my family, many of us grew up watching Egyptian films. Being here, I felt like I was entering a space that belongs to so many people in the Arab world. And the fact that the festival had a real public audience was important to us.
After the screening, an Egyptian woman came up to me and said that with everything going on in the region, many of our films focus on catastrophe, which is natural and necessary. However, after watching “Dead Dog,” she was reassured that “I exist, too.” She was grateful to see small stories about humans and intimate existential questions.
That meant a lot to me. I think everyday stories also deserve space. Even in difficult times, people live, love, part, and question themselves. I don’t think every movie needs to represent the trauma of an entire nation. These quiet stories are also important.
The film received significant support from the Doha Film Institute, the Red Sea Film Fund, and others. What did that support bring to the project?
Doha was my first financier and also supported my first film. That trust meant a lot. Launching a film industry in Lebanon is extremely difficult given the economic crisis and lack of a solid industry infrastructure. Red Sea supported us in post-production at the moments we needed to complete the film.
I also felt like I wasn’t isolated, but part of the local film community. And none of this would have been possible without Placeless Films. Lala Abou Saifan and the production team believed in the script from the beginning. We never had to fight over vision. Coincidentally, we ended up with an all-female producing/directing team and a very warm and supportive partnership emerged.
