Front Row boards Zaid Abu Hamdan’s crime thriller ‘Boomah’ starring Rakeen Saad

Dubai-based Front Row Productions has boarded Zaid Abu Hamdan’s Boomah, an upcoming Arab crime thriller starring Jordanian actress Rakeen Saad.

Front Row has joined forces with burgeoning Jordanian outfit Bounce Productions to make the feature, which is described as a “raw and unfiltered crime-thriller set in one of Jordan’s roughest cities”. The film is scheduled to start shooting in spring 2024 with a release to follow by early 2025.

Saad, who stars in Netflix hit AlRawabi School For Girls and MBC Shahid’s The Giza Killer, will play the lead role of Boomah.

Inspired by real-life characters, the story follows a notorious and knife-savvy female gang member who hustles to switch the decades old dominion of street thugs and religious extremists, while battling with the traumas of her harrowing orphaned past.

The project previously won the top prize at Saudi’s Red Sea Lodge in 2021, when the project was titled The Zarqa Girl, and received the Jordanian Royal Film Commission’s film fund production award in 2022.

It will mark Abu Hamdan’s second feature, following Daughters of Abdul-Rahman, which received its world premiere at Cairo International Film Festival in 2021 and went on to achieve a successful festival run.

It marks the latest push into production by Front Row, one of the leading distributors in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which has included an adaptation of Italian hit Perfect Strangers and will next see the release of Matty Brown’s thriller The Sand Castle. It is also working on an Arabic-language remake of Intouchables, which will film in Egypt, and an adaptation of Miracle In Cell No.7.

Front Row Productions is a joint venture between distributors Front Row Filmed Entertainment and Empire Entertainment.

Bounce is a production company established in 2022 by producer Ahmad Abu Koush and Abu Hamdan. Boomah will be the company’s first feature film project.

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