Furies

“In 2019, Lebanon’s economy collapsed after rampant political corruption. Overnight, banks stopped giving millions of people access to their own money. No one realized that this crisis would last for years, with ordinary people unable to retrieve their life savings.” 

In just a few lines, Rami Kodeih immediately plunges us into the heart of his characters’ dilemma, set three years after those pivotal events. 

In a stifling, sticky Beirut, two sisters (Maria Nakouzi and Rym Mroue, demonstrating great chemistry) devise a meticulously planned, yet dangerous, nighttime caper to recover their money and fund a life-saving procedure. Teaming up with two men with shady pasts (Issam Bou Khaled and Hasan Akil), the sisters go all out in a thrilling race against the clock. 

In Furies, time is money. So, if the characters are running out of money, they are also running out of time and the fast-paced editing conveys all the tension the characters are experiencing. Beyond the personal stakes for our protagonists, the situations in which they find themselves reveal political issues that are far deeper than they initially appeared to be.

Produced by the Brazilian Rodrigo Teixeira (Call Me By Your Name, TIFF ’17; The Lighthouse, TIFF ’19), drawing on the conventions of heist films, Furies offers the exhilarating pleasure of depicting the strength of ordinary people who decide to take on a corrupt system. That’s why Kodeih’s debut thriller has all the makings of a great movie.

CLAIRE DIAO

Content advisory: violence, coarse language