Egyptian director Ibrahim el-Batout’s human organ-trafficking thriller The Cat will go into post-production at Paris-based Knightworks in January.

The Cat is the second feature-length production from Amr Waked and Salah Al-Hanafy’s Cairo-based Zad Communication, after el-Batout’s Winter Of Discontent which is Egypt’s Oscar submission this year.

In The Cat, actor-producer Waked stars as a Cairo gangster who goes head to head with a trafficking boss, played by Al-Hanafy, in a bid to close down his organ-harvesting operation.

According to a recent report by the Coalition for Organ Failure Solutions (COFS), organ trafficking is on the rise in Egypt. The study estimated there are thousands of victims of the crime in the country, many of them street children or illegal immigrants forced to give up their organs by traffickers.

The Cat shot over the summer amid the mass protests leading up to the deposing Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.

Since then, Waked has just come off the Paris set of Luc Besson’s sci-fi picture Lucy in which he is co-starring opposite Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman as a French policeman, the picture’s forth role.

The actor’s other international credits include Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Syriana and Contagion. 

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