PRESS RELEASE
September 1, 2020
Sterling Heights, MI, USA
Pomegranate Pictures is pleased to announce the attachment of Samya (“Sam”) Rahmani to play the lead in the 2021 production of Pomegranate.
Samya was born in London, England to Iraqi parents and grew up between Canada and Jordan. She started acting at age 11 when she played a small role in Guys & Dolls and stayed involved in theatre throughout high school and university in many productions like The Wiz, Rent and Fame. Sam recently broke out into television and film; her most recent work Child Bride screened at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner. She plays Lamma in the new television series Little America, streaming on Apple TV+. She’s also made an appearance in The CW’s Charmed, and played the role of Zadi in the new Hulu Original comedy Woke, alongside Lamorne Morris, Sasheer Zamata and Blake Anderson. Her upcoming projects include a starring role in a drama short with award-winning director Mostafa Keshvari. Sam has trained at the Vancouver Academy of Dramatic Arts and the esteemed William Esper Studio in NYC.
In Pomegranate, Sam plays the lead, Niran Al Mousawi, a recent refugee-immigrant with her family from Iraq. She dreams of getting her driver’s license, going to college, getting a job and becoming a modern-day journalist or poet, if she can only shake her mother’s strict Muslim traditions. Curvy in the right places, she prefers tight jeans and tops but wears the hijab to keep her mother from deporting her back to Iraq or marrying her off to an unknown suitor. Politically liberal, and easily irritated, she has trouble accepting the resettlement help of Mary, a neighbor who, although also form Iraq, is politically a conservative, a Christian, and well assimilated into American culture.
Pomegranate’s writer-director, Weam Namou said, “When I saw Samya’s demo reel, I knew she had to play Niran, our main character. She had the beautiful soft features and strong characteristic of Niran. I didn’t learn that she’s of Iraqi background until the day of the audition, and that made it even more special for me to have her play this role.”
Pomegranate is a dramedy by writer-director Weam Namou, based on her childhood experiences immigrating from Iraq to the United States, and then as an adult living through the presidential election of 2016. Consequently, Pomegranate is the story about how, in the weeks before the election of Donald Trump in 2016, a young, politically liberal, Iraqi Muslim immigrant struggles to find her footing in a neighborhood of well-to-do, politically conservative, Iraqi Christians, while battling her family’s fears of deprivation and demands of loyalty to Muslim traditions.
Pomegranate Pictures, LL is owned and managed by Weam Namou, who wrote the screenplay and will direct the movie. She is working together in association with Buffalo 8 Productions (Santa Monica, CA) to produce the movie.
Pomegranate 