Zeina Daccache, or “Abu Ali“ as the inmates of Roumieh prison called her, is an energetic lady in her early thirties, a director from Lebanon and a licensed drama therapist who is best known for her role in the satire political TV program “Bas Mat Watan.”
Her film “12 Angry Lebanese – the documentary” recently won the Muhr Al Arab Documentary First Prize award and the People’s Choice at the 6th Annual Dubai International Film Festival.
“12 Angry Lebanese – the documentary” is a heartwarming story about the making of the theatre piece by the same name. It shows the incredible sequence of events, triumphs, failures and revelations that accompanied Daccache’s Drama therapy project in Roumieh – Lebanon’s most notorious penitentiary, which holds 4000 of the fiercest prisoners including murderers, rapists, drug dealers and Jund al Qaeda – and resulted in the making of the play “12 Angry Lebanese”.
Daccache based her play “12 Angry Lebanese“ on Reginald Rose’s “12 Angry Men” , originally a TV-Play that was also interpreted to a movie starring Henry Fonda in the year 1957 about the story of 11 jurors and how a dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court. The theater guys at Roumieh prison, as the prisoners were called in the documentary, played the role of their judges and deliberated and argued the suspect’s motives and past while talking about their own experiences.
Last month, the Royal Film Commission screened the film in Amman and the screening room was over crowded to the extent that another screening was arranged afterwards to accommodate the huge turn out. Source