Shihabi takes on the role of Melody Pendras, a documentary filmmaker who leads an investigation into a dangerous cult.
Saudi-born actress Dina Shihabi, a former student of Dubai’s Chaloub Dance Studio in Ductac, is to play a lead role in Netflix’s upcoming series Archive 81.
The series has been created by aficionados in horror genres including James Wan, Rebecca Thomas, Rebecca Sonnenshine, and Paul Harris Boardman.
It is based on a found-footage horror podcast of the same name by Marc Sollinger and Daniel Powell. The eight-episode long series revolves around archivist Dan Turner, who reconstructs the work of documentary filmmaker Melody Pendras and gets exceedingly drawn into her investigation.
Set to be released on January 14, the show follows an archivist who takes a job restoring damaged videotapes and gets pulled into the vortex of a mystery involving a missing director and a demonic cult.
The series stars Mamoudou Athie, Evan Jonigkeit and Shihabi.
“Archive 81 follows archivist Dan Turner, who takes a job restoring a collection of damaged videotapes from 1994. Reconstructing the work of a documentary filmmaker named Melody Pendras, he is drawn into her investigation of a dangerous cult at the Visser apartment building. As the season unfolds across these two timelines, Dan slowly finds himself obsessed with uncovering what happened to Melody. When the two characters form a mysterious connection, Dan becomes convinced he can save her from the terrifying end she met 25 years ago,” Netflix explained in its synopsis of the show.
The actress, who spent her childhood between Riyadh, Beirut and Dubai, was born in Saudi Arabia to Saudi-Norwegian journalist Ali Shihabi and her mother Nadia, who is half-Palestinian and half German-Haitian.
Shihabi moved to the US in 2007 and was the first Middle Eastern-born woman to be accepted to The Juilliard School and the New York University Graduate Acting Programme. She began appearing in short films in 2010, but her big break came in 2017 with the role of Hanin in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
