The leading independent film distributor in the MENA region, Front Row Filmed Entertainment, has acquired the rights for the Lebanese short film Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living.
Released in 2021, the short film is produced by Bee On Set Productions, a Beirut-based production company, and directed by the Lebanese-Argentinian filmmaker George Peter Barbari.
In his film, the writer/director Barbari aimed to “deconstruct the global myth that surrounds a masculine rite of passage. He has created a polyphonic film of formal clarity in which poetry and social reality painfully collide,” according to Berlinale.
Barbari was born in California in 1992 and grew up in Lebanon, specifically in Batroun where the storyline of the film takes place. He released Wait in 2014 and a short documentary titled A Time in a Life in 2015.
His 2021 short film Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living is his debut feature film.
The film stars new actors like Etienne Assal, Feyrouz Abi Hassan, Souraya Baghdadi, Adnan Khabbaz, Jean-Paul Franjieh, and Elie Saad.
The storyline is set in Batroun when a group of troubled teens is taking their friend Etienne to an escort in an attempt to make him lose his chastity.
Since its launching in the Berlinale in 2021, Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living was featured in other film festivals, such as the New Horizons International Film Festival in Poland, Istanbul Film Festival, the Leiden International Film Festival, where it won the prize for a best first feature.
Front Row Filmed Entertainment recently launched the first Arabic Netflix remake of the hit “Perfect Strangers” which ranked Top 1 in the MENA region and features Lebanese icons like George Khabbaz and Nadine Labaki, as well as other well-known Lebanese and Egyptian actors like Mona Zaki.
