MPM Premium has inked deals on Mandoob, the Saudi thriller which broke box office records on its local release last year.
It has sold the film to India (Superfine), Latin America (Encripta), Australia (SBS) and Indonesia (Falcon); while negotiations are underway for France, the US, and Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Mandoob – which also has the English title Night Courier in some territories – is the feature directorial debut of Ali Kalthami, co-founder of Saudi studio Telfaz11. Set in the Saudi capital Riyadh, it follows a mentally fragile man racing against time to save his ailing father.
It debuted at Toronto in September 2023, before a MENA premiere at last year’s festival in the Red Sea Competition.
Mandoob beat US studio title Wonka on its opening weekend in KSA in December last year, taking $1.58m from 114,000 admissions in the first two weeks through Front Row Arabia. This marked the highest opening for a local title since Saudi Arabia ended its 35-year ban on cinemas in December 2017, with the film notching over $7m across its run.
It was released in UK cinemas through Metis Films earlier this year; while it landed on Netflix in the MENA region on October 31. Mandoob is a success story for Red Sea, having come through the Souk project market at the festival’s first edition in 2021.
MPM has a presence at this year’s Red Sea, with a regional premiere for Lotfi Achour’s terrorism drama Red Path in the Red Sea Competition, in the Culture Square (cinema 1) at 22.15 tonight; before Merzak Allouache’s comedy Front Row plays in Arab Spectacular tomorrow at 17.15.
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