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Beirut-based production powerhouse Cedars Art Productions is not slowing down despite the ongoing Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.

Sadek Sabbah — who is CEO of the prominent Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region TV and film company that also has offices in Cairo, Casablanca and Dubai — is at Mipcom with a rich slate. Though Cedars Art was meant to be celebrating its 70-year anniversary in Cannes, they are now just taking note of the recurrence. “I don’t want to say ‘celebrating’ due to the chaos that is happening in Lebanon and Palestine,” Sabbah tells Variety.

The Mipcom slate of Cedars Art – which has long been spearheading efforts for Arab shows to gain more international eyeballs – is toplined by “Far Away,” a Turkish adaptation of their hit Arabic show “Al Hayba” about a family of arms smugglers. It marks a milestone of sorts, since Turkey is among the world’s top exporters of TV dramas.

Hit Arabic TV show “Al Hayba,” about a family of arms smugglers working the border between Syria and Lebanon, is set for a Turkish adaptation in a milestone deal inked between prominent Lebanese film and TV production company Cedars Art Production and Turkish TV powerhouse Ay Yapim (“Forbidden Love”).

The “Al Hayba” agreement between Cedars Art and Ay Yapim marks the first international adaptation of an Arabic longform format in recent times and also the first time an Arabic show gets a redo in Turkey, which is among the top exporters of TV dramas around the world.

“We are proud to be the first in the world to offer a regional Arabic [longform narrative] format for international licensing,” Cedars Art president Sadek Sabbah told Variety, calling the deal “a very big opportunity for our company and also for other Arabic producers, because it can take Arabic production to the next level.”

Sabbah...

The opus of Karim Kassem could be divided in two parts. In the US, where he lives, he is a cameraman that took part in filming titles like “Women Who Kill”, “Patti Cake$” and “Becoming Warren Buffett”. In his home country of Lebanon, he pursues the career of a filmmaker. So far, he directed half a dozen of shorts. “Only the Winds” is his feature-length debut.

Only the Winds is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

The first controversy about it is its labelling. At Visions du Réel, it was screened as a documentary, while at IFFR, where we had the chance to see it in Harbour section, it was labelled a drama. To be completely on the safe side, let us say it is a docu-fiction / auto-fiction hybrid of sorts.

The filmmaker Karim Kassem, played by himself, comes to Beirut with an idea to make a film about the blind children in the mountains.