Alumnus Sameh Zoabi ’05 Executive Producer of ‘Dinner at the Center of the Earth’
Alumnus Sameh Zoabi '05 is set to serve as Executive Producer on the new series Dinner at the Center of the Earth for Sony Pictures Television Studios and Showtime. The show, based on the eponymous novel about the Israel/Palestine conflict, will be helmed by Homeland architects Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. Dinner at the Center of the Earth does not have a release date yet.
The series will play in the Negev desert, where a nameless prisoner languishes in a secret cell, his only companion the guard who has watched over him for a dozen years. Meanwhile, the prisoner’s arch nemesis—The General, Israel’s most controversial leader—lies dying in a hospital bed. From Israel and Gaza to Paris, Italy, and America, we follow the prisoner’s unlikely journey to his cell.
Zoabi’s last film Tel Aviv On Fire, which was directed by him and co-written by him with Special Lecturer Dan Kleinman, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and earned great praise on the festival circuit.
Sameh Zoabi was born in 1975 in Iskal, a Palestinian village near the city of Nazareth. He graduated from Tel Aviv University with a dual degree in Film Studies and English Literature before earning a Fulbright Fellowship to earn his MFA in Filmmaking from Columbia University in 2005. With films like Tel Aviv On Fire, Zoabi seeks to invoke humor in difficult narratives, stating, "We talk about Palestine being a place that is very hard, but I always remember people laughing all the time." In addition to filmmaking, Zoabi is an adjunct professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Hunter College, and Columbia University's MFA program.
Watch the trailer for Tel Aviv On Fire below.