Yahoo Lifestyle Syrian-French Director Anas Khalaf Unveils Post-Bashar Al-Assad Feel-Good Tennis Drama ‘Love-45’ With Laetitia Dosch & Charif Ghattas – Qumra
EXCLUSIVE: Anas Khalaf and Rana Kazkaz’s Mare Nostrum and The Translator count among the rare fiction works made by Syrian directors tackling the 2011 democracy protests and President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal 14-year campaign to crush them.
The husband-and-wife team’s allegorical short film Mare Nostrum (2020) tapped into the resulting Mediterranean Sea migrant crisis as people fled the conflict, with Ziad Bakri playing a harrowed father who inexplicably throws his young daughter into the sea.
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Political thriller The Translator (2020) explored the early days of the revolution and the decades of oppression that preceded it, through the tale of a political refugee living in Australia who returns to Syria in search of his brother after he is arrested by the authorities for protesting.
Khalaf is now in the late stages of development on Beirut and Bekaa Valley-set tennis-themed fiction feature Love-45, which he has been presenting to potential production and sales partners this week at the Doha Film Institute’s talent and project incubator event Qumra.
The picture evolves around an overweight Lebanese man, called Walid, whose unresolved childhood trauma has set him on a self-destructive path. He finds redemption when he is asked to help set up a tennis camp for Syrian refugee children traumatized by their experiences in the war.
This task results in life-changing encounters with French humanitarian worker Maya and 12-year-old Syrian refugee Laith, who turns out to be a tennis prodigy.
“He takes him in, cares for him and makes him the tennis player he never became himself,” says Khalaf. “It’s a story about transmission, healing and how you break the cycle of trauma.”
“The Translator was very dark, very hopeless. Love-45 is much more hopeful, full of light. I want it to be on the other end of the spectrum. At the end of Love-45, I want the audience to be in love, to want to make love and want to play tennis,” he says.
Khalaf has tapped into his own passion for tennis, complicated relationship with food as well as attempts to break a cycle of trauma caused by moving back and forth between Syria and France as a child due to the political situation.
He co-wrote the screenplay in 2021 with Kazkaz, who is now working on her own feature project and not co-directing this time. It had to be rejigged following the fall of al-Assad to reflect the new reality for refugees, he says.
“Syrian refugees are not welcome in Europe anymore. They’ve stopped doing the paperwork, saying, ‘Now Assad is gone, the threat is gone, you can go back to Syria.’ It’s not the best time to go back but it’s still safer than it was under Assad,” says Khalaf. “We have incorporated that into the script. It brings a timebomb element for Laith who was on the cusp of joining family in France.”
The film is being produced by Marine Vaillant at Paris and Marseille-based Special Touch Studios, whose previous credits include Michelle and Noel Keserwany’s Berlin Golden Bear-winning short Les Chenilles and Dahlia Nemlich’s Somewhere in Between, which won best short at the Red Sea International Film Festival in 2023
The production has agreements in principle with Swiss actress and director Laetitia Dosch for the role of Maya, and Lebanese, Paris-based actor Charif Ghattas, who is also a tennis player, for Walid. Laith will be played by a non-actor.
“It was a question of either finding a 12-year-old actor and teaching him tennis, or a tennis player and teaching him how to act… we went with the latter as it would have taken too long to get a non-tennis player to the level of a pro,” says Khalaf. “He is the son of the coach of Syria’s Davis Cup team, who I know because he used to be my old tennis coach.”
Khalaf says there will be a fair amount of tennis intercut with the off-court drama, as well as allusions to Roger Federer and his philosophies around focus, resilience and not dwelling on past lost points.
“Roger Federer is mentioned throughout the narrative. We’d love to get him on board in some sort of capacity,” says Khalaf.
Production partners include UK-based Cocoon Films (Lyd, The Teacher) and Switzerland’s Tipimages Production (The Translator).
“We want to add another country which would be Luxembourg or Belgium but we’re in discussion about that one,” says Vaillant.
Backers to date include the DFI, Cairo-based film company Mad Solutions and So Medias Invest, while Vaillant will also be applying to France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC), as well as looking to tap into regional post-production schemes in southern France. The production has yet to set a sales company. The Translator was sold by Charades.
“There is a lot of interest because there are hardly any films coming out of Syria and Lebanon in this vein. We have a daring point of view because it’s based on hope. We need hope. There’s also commercial appeal. It’s entertaining film with a deep topic. That’s at the heart of the DNA of what we do at Special Touch Studios. We want to entertain audiences and make them think at the same time.”
Khalaf and Kazkaz, were living in Damascus at the time of the 2011 pro-democracy protests and fled in 2012 as the situation deteriorated. The Doha-based director returned to Syria briefly two weeks after the fall of al-Assad on December 8, 2024.
“I wanted to go. I was on the wanted list of the regime for all these years for making The Translator so I couldn’t go back. I wanted to see my family and what had happened to the country,” he says.
“I’m Syrian. I grew up in many places but I’m from Syria, so it was very hard to not be able to go back for all these years, from 2012 to 2024, almost 2025. It was very moving, very intense. There’s a lot to do, and I want to be part of rebuilding the new country and its new departure.”
Beyond Love 45, Khalaf still has his sights set on completing two other previously announced films – The Photographer and The Trainer, part of a planned trilogy with The Translator.
The Photographer is about Syrian military police whistleblower Farid Nada al-Madhhan, code-named Caesar, who leaked photos of tens of thousands of people who died under torture and neglect while in al-Assad’s notorious detention centers.
The Trainer follows the story of Syrian soccer coach Osama Abdul Mohsen, whose story went viral after he was tripped-up by a Hungarian camerawoman on the Hungarian-Serbian border as he ran with his seven-year-old son.
Khalaf is also writing a TV series entitled The Syrian Doctor about a medic who arrested and tortured in 2012 for treating pro-democracy protestors and then flees to France with his three-year-old daughter. When the regime falls, he wants to return to Syria but faces opposition from his now 15-year-old daughter, who feels culturally French.
The aim is to shoot Love-45 in Lebanon in early 2026 if the political situation permits. “We will assess the situation closer to pre-production,” said Vaillant.
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