EXCLUSIVE: Vienna-based sales agency Square Eyes has acquired world sales rights to Revolutionaries Never Die, the latest feature from Palestinian filmmaker , set to debut in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
The film’s synopsis reads: “In 2018, veteran Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab reached out to filmmaker and archivist Mohanad Yaqubi with an invitation to collaborate. She died two months later, having never received an answer. A lyrical expedition through the life, political commitments, and artistic vision of Jocelyne Saab, a singular voice in a revolutionary time, this film is Yaqubi’s answer: a cinematic collaboration that seeks to imagine what their conversation might have been.”
Born and raised in Beirut, Saab was a beloved filmmaker and war reporter. In 1975, she directed her first feature film, a documentary, Lebanon in Turmoil, a portrait of the Lebanese Civil War. Saab then spent fifteen years covering the Lebanese war, during which she made almost 30 films, including Beirut, Never Again. She made her fiction debut in 1985 with The Razor’s Edge, which screened at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. She died in 2019 in Paris after a long illness.
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Revolutionaries Never Die is Yaqubi’s third archive-based feature, following Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2016), which premiered at TIFF and screened at the Berlinale and Cinéma du réel, and R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (2022), which screened at IDFA. Revolutionaries Never Die was awarded the top prize for best project in post-production at the 2025 Cairo Film Connection and was presented at picture lock at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra 2026.
Yaqubi produced the film alongside Mathilde Rouxel. The film was edited by Elettra Bisogno. The co-producers are Nael Khliefi for Sourat Films and Ulrike Lindmayr and Vincent Stroep for Escautville, with Rita Maria Habib as associate producer and Mohamad Jabaly (Palartic) and Elhum Shakerifar (Hakawat) as executive producers.
The deal was brokered by Wouter Jansen, CEO of Square Eyes, directly with producer Sami Saeed and Yaqubi of Idioms Film.
Jansen described the film as “a powerful exploration of Jocelyne Saab’s work in the form of a conversation that never happened.”
“The narrative that Mohanad has formed shows how strongly her work and her political commitment still resonate today. We are very proud to be helping this urgent film reach its audience, starting with Locarno,” Jansen continued.
Yaqubi added: “Throughout my career, I have explored the political power of cinema and the ways images shape collective memory. With Revolutionaries Never Die, my dialogue with the late Jocelyne Saab opens a deeply personal reflection on loss, solidarity, and the enduring life of revolutionary images. We are thrilled to partner with Square Eyes, whose commitment to distinctive auteur cinema makes them the perfect collaborator as the film begins its international journey with its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.”
