# Chi Fechil: production one-sheet

Internal packaging draft for buyer and co-production conversations.

## Format snapshot

| Field | Current packaging position |
| --- | --- |
| Title | `Chi Fechil` |
| Creator | Boudy Sfeir |
| Director path | Creator-led version preferred, subject to confirmation in packaging round |
| Format | 9 x 20 minutes |
| Genre | Satirical mystery with mockumentary and found-footage grammar |
| Language | Lebanese Arabic, with an Egyptian host as the regional bridge |
| Setting | Beirut, with a limited mountain-road mystery strand |
| Commercial lane | Off-Ramadan event series |
| First window logic | Lebanese premiere first, then regional streaming |

## Logline

Three struggling Lebanese creatives disappear while trying to manufacture viral success. Through the footage they left behind, and through a sarcastic Egyptian host who reconstructs their rise and collapse, the series turns a comedy of failure into a mystery about visibility, ego, and self-erasure.

## Series positioning

`Chi Fechil` sits in a rare Arabic lane: sharp creator-world satire, escalating humiliation comedy, and a disappearance investigation inside one format. The Lebanese detail gives the show authority. The mockumentary investigation structure gives it portability. The result is a project that can open as a concentrated Lebanese event and widen regionally without flattening its identity.

## Packaging snapshot

- **Creative engine:** Every episode is a new formula for success, every formula ends in humiliation, and every humiliation deepens the disappearance mystery.
- **Regional bridge:** The Egyptian host is the key packaging asset outside Lebanon. He makes the show's codes legible across the region without forcing the Lebanese world to explain itself unnaturally.
- **Commercial hook:** The investigation format is the front door for buyers and audiences. It gives the project a subtitle-friendly structure and a clear episode-to-episode engine.
- **Distinctive promise:** The show becomes more valuable as the schemes start causing real emotional and moral damage.

## Cast and attachment strategy

The immediate need is a disciplined attachment strategy that tells buyers exactly what kind of talent will make the show land.

### Core trio

- **Mo:** A Lebanese actor with dead-serious comic control and visible artistic self-delusion. The performance needs to sell a man who treats each failed idea like a major cultural event.
- **Temsah:** A Lebanese actor with hustler velocity, improvisational rhythm, and the ability to make confidence feel both persuasive and flimsy.
- **Jad:** A Lebanese actor with natural charm and emotional porosity. Jad carries much of the human cost, so this role needs the most dramatic exposure.

### Strategic attachment

- **Egyptian host:** The single most valuable on-screen attachment for non-Lebanese buyers. The role needs an Egyptian performer with wit, authority, and enough screen identity to function as commentator, investigator, and audience proxy.

### Emotional anchor

- **Fairuz:** A grounded Lebanese actress who can carry the season's emotional counterweight and keep the social world from becoming purely schematic.

### Supporting strategy

- Use a mix of rising Lebanese performers and a small number of recognized comedy or drama faces in supporting parts to create local credibility without turning the budget into a star vehicle.

## Production profile

### Shooting footprint

The show should be packaged as a contained Beirut production with a limited secondary exterior unit:

- apartment and building stairwell
- neighborhood streets and rooftops
- cafes, bars, and nightlife interiors
- low-rent production and startup spaces
- family interiors
- limited mountain-road and mountain exteriors for the mystery frame

The footprint stays urban, contained, and schedule-efficient.

### Visual logic

Production value comes from format design rather than large-scale spend:

- host-led interviews
- found-footage capture
- screen-based material
- archive inserts
- stylized sketch material
- selective mystery reconstruction

The grammar allows the series to look authored and premium while staying physically contained.

### Working budget band

For buyer conversations, the most credible packaging position is a contained premium band built around format precision, performance, and controlled production scope.

- **Working season band:** roughly **USD 1.35 million to USD 2.25 million**
- **Working episode band:** roughly **USD 150,000 to USD 250,000 per episode**

These numbers are packaging assumptions only and should be validated with a Lebanese line producer before external circulation. The range reflects the format efficiency, the contained Beirut footprint, the short episode length, and room for moderate cast attachment while preserving budget discipline.

## Route to market

### Phase 1: Package

Use this one-sheet plus the core audience memo and buyer landscape to open producer-level conversations, especially with Film Clinic or a comparable co-production partner.

### Phase 2: First window

Pitch **LBCI** as the natural first Lebanese window, positioned as an off-Ramadan event series built for concentration, conversation, and digital afterlife.

### Phase 3: Regional streaming

With a producer attached and a first-window conversation underway, approach regional streamers in this order:

1. TOD Studios
2. Shahid / MBC Studios
3. Netflix MENA

## Immediate packaging tasks

Before this sheet circulates externally, lock the following:

- confirm whether Boudy Sfeir is directing
- replace attachment strategy with actual cast shortlist where possible
- validate the budget band with a line producer
- pair this sheet with the season engine sheet

## Bottom line

`Chi Fechil` should be packaged as a contained premium event series with a strong regional bridge, a clear first-window logic, and a format that can travel. The right sell is precision, not scale.