Saudi rapper lands ‘Spies in Disguise’ gig

Qusai is a Saudi hip-hop artist. (Getty)
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Updated 11 December 2019
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Saudi rapper lands ‘Spies in Disguise’ gig

  • Qusai will voice the main character who is played by Will Smith in the original version of the film

DUBAI: The local version of the animated film “Spies in Disguise” is set to release across cinemas in the Gulf Cooperation Council states, and will feature the voices of Saudi hip hop artist Qusai alongside Lebanese TV presenter Raya Abirached on Dec. 26.




Lebanese TV presenter Raya Abirached will voice the supporting role. (AFP)​​

Qusai will voice the character of Lance Sterling, who is played by Will Smith in the original version of the film, with Abirached joining in a supporting role that will give Arab audiences the opportunity to listen to the film in their native language.

 

 

“As soon as I was approached to voice the character played by Will Smith in the original version, I felt an immediate connection. Lance Sterling is an incredible character with humor and wit and I really wanted to do the role justice,” Qusai said.




Qusai will voice the character of Lance Sterling. (Supplied)

“Spies in Disguise” follows two characters — super spy Sterling and scientist Walter Beckett — who are exact opposites.


‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance

Updated 24 January 2026
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‘One in a Million’: Syrian refugee tale wows Sundance

PARK CITY: As a million Syrians fled their country's devastating civil war in 2015, directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes headed to Turkey where they would meet a young girl who encapsulated the contradictions of this enormous migration.

In Ismir, they met Isra'a, a then-11-year-old girl whose family had left Aleppo as bombs rained down on the city, and who would become the subject of their documentary "One In A Million," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.

For the next ten years, they followed her and her family's travels through Europe, towards Germany and a new life, where the opportunities and the challenges would almost tear her family apart.

The film is by directors Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes. (Supplied)

There was "something about Isra'a that sort of felt to us like it encapsulated everything about what was happening there," MacInnes told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Friday.

"The obvious vulnerability of her situation, especially as being a child going through this, but that at the same time, she was an agent.

"She wasn't sitting back, waiting for other people to save her. She was trying to fight, make her own way there."

The documentary mixes fly-on-the-wall footage with sit-down interviews that reveal Isra'a's changing relationship with Germany, with her religion, and with her father.

It is this evolution between father and daughter that provides the emotional backbone to the film, and through which tensions play out over their new-found freedoms in Europe -- something her father struggles to adjust to.

Isra'a, who by the end of the film is a married mother living in Germany, said watching her life on film in the Park City theatre was "beautiful."

And having documentarists follow her every step of the way as she grew had its upsides.

"I felt like this was something very special," she told the audience after the screening. "My friends thought I was famous; it made making friends easier and faster."