The Saudi Movie Fee has chosen Anas Ba Tahaf’s A Matter of Life and Loss of life as Saudi Arabia’s official submission for Finest Worldwide Characteristic Movie on the 99th Academy Awards.
Native stars Yaqoub Alfarhan (Scales, Norah) and Sarah Taibah (Mandoob) play an unlikely couple whose love blossoms towards the percentages within the Jeddah-set function, one of many quirkiest native romantic-com-black comedies to return out of Saudi Arabia for the reason that lifting of its 35-year cinema ban in 2017.
Taibah, who additionally wrote the screenplay, performs Hayat, a fiercely impartial younger girl satisfied {that a} generational curse will kill her on her thirtieth birthday. Having made peace with dying, she crosses paths with Yousef (Alfarhan), a superb however emotionally indifferent coronary heart surgeon dwelling with bradycardia.
His abnormally sluggish heartbeat solely appears to quicken when he comes near loss of life or to killing. As a surgeon surrounded every single day by the delicate line between life and loss of life, temptation isn’t distant. She needs to die, he needs to kill, and they need to be excellent for one another. Then, inconveniently, they fall in love.
The solid additionally options Hosam Al Harthy, Fay Fouad, Amani Aljameel, Ghada Aboud, Rahaf Ibrahim and Najla Alabdullah, with manufacturing design by Ibrahim Khorma.
The movie world premiered on the Pink Sea Worldwide Movie Pageant in December 2025, earlier than opening theatrically throughout Saudi Arabia on June 25, 2026. It later acquired a Jury Particular Point out on the twelfth Saudi Movie Pageant, the place Taibah received the Golden Palm for Finest Appearing for her efficiency as Hayat.
Director Ba Tahaf beforehand labored as coproducer, editor and first assistant director on Mahmoud Sabbagh’s Barakah Meets Barakah, which represented Saudi Arabia within the Finest Overseas Language Movie class on the 89th Academy Awards.
A Matter of Life and Loss of life is produced by Mohamed Hefzy for Movie Clinic, Gianluca Chakra for Entrance Row Filmed Leisure, and Abdulelah Alahmary and Ahmad Taema for Arabia Photos, with help from the Pink Sea Fund. Entrance Row Filmed Leisure is dealing with worldwide gross sales.
“Hayat is impulsive, humorous, cussed, fearless and spectacularly headstrong, a up to date Saudi girl written with out clarification or apology. Her independence isn’t the story. It’s merely who she is,” wrote Entrance Row in an announcement asserting the Saudi Oscar entry.
“The movie’s originality lies as a lot in how it’s advised as in its premise. Its heightened visible model strikes confidently between romance, fantasy and black comedy, shifting tone with out settling neatly into anybody style. When the mythology behind Hayat’s curse is revealed, reside motion briefly provides technique to a handcrafted, gothic animated sequence, including one other surprising layer to the movie’s visible language.”
“Collectively, these components give A Matter of Life and Loss of life an identification that stands aside inside Saudi cinema and feels equally distinctive inside Arab filmmaking extra broadly. Set and shot in Jeddah, the town is integral to that identification. Its streets, structure, humour, language and contradictions are woven into the story, grounding its more and more fantastical world in a recognisable up to date actuality.”
Written by and starring Sarah Taibah alongside Yaqoub Al Farhan, the movie is produced by Movie Clinic, Entrance Row Filmed Leisure and Arabia Photos, with Entrance Row dealing with worldwide gross sales.
Saudi Arabia, which first began submitting movies to the Oscars in 2013, kicking off with Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjada. Subsequent entries have included Barakah Meets Barakah (2016) and Shahad Ameen’s Hijra final yr. The nation has but to be nominated.
