Floating the suggestion that there's negligible difference between gangsters and film producers, this darkly satirical thriller heralds good things for 27-year-old Lebanese writer/director Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya. Using a Beirut pizzeria as a front, brothers Jad (Wissam Fares), Ziad (co-writer Alain Saadeh) and Joe (Tarek Yaacoub) run a low-level cocaine business whose biggest client is a would-be auteurist filmmaker (Fouad Yammine). When a drug run to Syria goes awry, leaving dead bodies hither and yon, the brothers find themselves in possession of enough illegal substances to make them all wealthy. The problem? There's a gang on their trail. The solution? Become movie producers and spirit the cache out of Lebanon in film canisters...

Switching gears from crime thriller into meta-comedy in the second half, Bou Chaaya has a lot of fun at the expense of the marginal local film industry and ultimately trains his sights on wider political corruption. Comparisons to Argo, Bullets Over Broadway and Get Shorty are inevitable, but shouldn't gloss over the film's tangy Lebanese flavor.

Winner: Best Film Marrakech; Best New Director, Beijing