Playtime Boards Danish Revenge Thriller ‘Crossing Lines’ by Baghdad-Born Jahfar Muataz

Elsa Keslassy

Playtime has boarded “Crossing Lines,” a Danish thriller by Baghdad-born first-time director Jahfar Muataz.

Currently filming, “Crossing Lines” revolves around a reformed criminal, Cairo, who enjoys his new life as a gang exit counselor. When his nephew Hamza disappears, Cairo discovers he had secretly joined his former gang. Despite his pledge to avoid violence, Cairo enlists his former underworld connections, growing frustrated with the police’s lack of action. His investigation leads him into Copenhagen’s criminal scene where his past instincts resurface.

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The well-known cast is led by Afshin Firouzi (“Boundless”), Albert Arthur Amiryan (“Forhøret”), Charlotte Fich (“Borgen”).

“Jahfar’s script is a page turner,” said Nicolas Brigaud-Robert, co-CEO of Playtime. “This is exactly what you are looking for when you receive a project as an international sales company: something engaging, with a fresh tone, that can speak to people across borders,” he continued.

Jahfar moved to Denmark as a child but he lived in Iraq as a teenager for two years during the war. That experience had an impact on him as a person and a film director, urging him to explore the psychological aspects of the human condition through his work. In 2019, Jahfar was accepted into the Danish film school Super16. He has directed music videos, as well as written and directed several short films.

“Crossing Lines” will be released in Denmark by Scanbox Entertainment next year. Playtime and Scanbox are now part of the same company, Vuelta Group, a rising European film studio spearheaded by media finance veterans Jerome Levy and David Atlan-Jackson.

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