‘Rebel’: First Look At Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah’s Raw Family Drama Set For Cannes

Diana Lodderhose
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a first look at Rebel, the latest feature from Belgian directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Bad Boys For Life), which is screening in the Midnight Section at the 75th Cannes Film Festival this month.

It’s a personal story from the Moroccan-born directors, who also wrote the script along with Jan Van Dyck and Kevin Meul. Rebel follows Kamal, who resolves to change his life for the better when he leaves Belgium to help war victims in Syria. But, having arrived, he is forced to join the militia and is left stranded in Raqqa. Back home, his younger brother Nassim quickly becomes easy prey for radical recruiters who promise to reunite him with his brother. Their mother, Leila, fights to protect the only thing she has left: her youngest son.

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“I consider this to be our most personal movie out of all the movies we’ve done,” El Arbi told Deadline. “It’s a movie of people that we either know or people we know whose family members and friends have experienced this. It was just all of a sudden at this certain period of time around 2013, where so many people like us, from Moroccan origins in Belgium went to Syria and it was right before ISIS eventually came to be in 2014. Some of them became radicalized and some got sucked into that terrorist organization.”

He added, “We got to see the evolution of what happened in this historical moment in the lead up to the war in Syria and we wanted to tell that story. We wanted to tell the story of how romantic and heroic Jihad might seem at first glance and how religion is used as a weapon.”

. - Credit: Rebel/Wild Bunch
. - Credit: Rebel/Wild Bunch

Rebel/Wild Bunch

The film, which is also driven by song, dance and rap, stars Aboubakr Bensaihi, Lubna Azabal, Amir El Arbi, Tara Abboud and Younes Bouab. It’s produced by Caviar, in coproduction with Beluga Tree, Calach Films and Le Collectif 64, and in association with Los Morros and The Imaginatium Films. Executive Producers are Robin Kerremans, Michael Sagol, El Arbi, Fallah and it is produced by Bert Hamelinck and Dimitri Verbeeck.

Worldwide sales for the title are being handled by Wild Bunch International with CAA Media Finance handling U.S. sales.

El Arbi and Fallah recently directed Bad Boys For Life, which grossed $426.5M worldwide in 2020. They first broke through with their film Black, a Romeo & Juliet-type drama set in the world of organized crime in Belgium.

The duo are repped by CAA, Management 360 and Karl Austen.

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