Lebanese Auteur Ghassan Salhab to Shoot Beirut-Set Vampire Movie ‘The Last City,’ With Mad World Handling World Sales (EXCLUSIVE)

Newly launched Dubai-based sales company Mad World has acquired worldwide rights to Lebanese auteur Ghassan Salhab’s genre-bending next project “The Last City,” which is set in a collapsing Beirut that has fallen prey to vampires.

Salhab, 66, who was born in Senegal to Lebanese parents, is considered one of Lebanon’s standout arthouse directors, known for works such as “Terra Incognita” (2002), The Last Man (2006), “The Mountain” (2011) and “The Valley” (2014), which have premiered at top festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Locarno and Toronto.

The narrative structure of Salhab’s latest project – which he plans to start shooting this winter – is divided into five non-consecutive nights that retrace the final weeks of the Lebanese capital, which is “under the sway of vampires in search of new victims who have become increasingly rare,” as the provided synopsis puts it.

“’The Last City’ is in a way – more than 15 years later – a sequel to my film ‘The Last Man,’” Salhab said in a director’s statement, noting that “Last Man” is about a medical examiner who becomes a vampire and “simply vanishes into the night.” 

“Since then, others [vampires] have followed, more and more of them, as Beirut became divided once again,” Salhab added, calling the film “a journey that immerses us in the haunting depths of a city transformed by vampires and divided by its own fragmentation.”

“The Last City” is produced by Lebanon’s Tania El-Khoury and is a co-production between Khamsin Films (Lebanon) and Les Films de l’Altaï (France), with support from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC); CNC (Aide aux Cinémas du Monde); and the Cairo-based indie Mad Solutions, which just branched out into film sales with the launch of Mad World at Cannes.

“MAD World was launched to bring the wealth of Arab filmmaking talent and unexpected Arab stories to the international stage,” said Mad World co-presidents Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab. “It’s our pleasure to work with these culturally rich, talented filmmakers, and especially Ghassan Salhab, who is one of the most singular Arab filmmakers, with over 15 films ranging from fiction to essay over the last 25 years.”