A documentary on the Iranian revolution from the point of view of Lebanese filmmakers (Jocelyne Saab with Rafic Boustani). In an attempt to understand what this wave of change will mean for the rest of the region, they travel from Tehran to Isfahan, Shiraz, Qom and to the Afghan border. Camera in hand, they take us for a walk in the footsteps of a world in the making.Read More »
The cease-fire declared on October 21, 1976, gave the Fedayeen the opportunity to reclaim this area—Fatah territory until it was abandoned in 1970—from the right wing militia. But Syrians and Israelis joined together to neutralise this Palestinian “autonomous force” and imposed a siege on two Lebanese frontier villages, Hanine and Kfarchouba, before attacking them.Read More »
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Portrait of a French mercenary working in Lebanon, hired by the Phalange to train the militias. War leaves its traces; and for some, who see death as part of the job, it’s a vocation.Read More »
Synopsis:
A few months after the incident of April 13, 1975, during which Palestinian civilians were machine-gunned by Phalangist militiamen, the toll is most tragic: six thousand dead, twenty thousand wounded, incessant kidnappings, a semi-destroyed capital. This film traces the origins of the Lebanese conflict, the perception of a society that goes to war while singing. A unique document on the Lebanese civil war. Beyond the religious war, the painting of a social and political reality that has not changed much, more than four decades later.Read More »
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Beirut, My City finds Saab and her collaborator, the playwright and director Roger Assaf, returning to the shell of her former home following Israel’s 1982 invasion, finding small glimmers of hope in the chaos of refugee camps and the rubble of decimated neighborhoods.
“I consider this to be my most important film, the one that is the closest to my heart. In 1982, my house was burning. That’s not nothing. It was a very old house. 150 years of history went up in flames and disappeared. All of that is suddenly destroyed. The family home, wiped off the map, gone from the city, having become a pile of ruins.”Read More »
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After studying literature at Cairo University, Dunia, 23 years old, wants to become a professional dancer. She attends audition for an oriental dance contest where she recites Arabian poetry without any body movement. She explains to the perplexed jury that a woman can’t move her body or evoke act of love when society ask women to hide their femininity. She is selected and meets Beshir, an intellectual and activist who will supervise her thesis on ecstasy in Sufi love poetry. Their attraction is mutual. This could be liberation for Dunia but the constraints on women in Egyptian society goes deeper than she suspects.Read More »
A few days after the Karantina massacre, in a predominantly Muslim slum in Beirut, Jocelyne Saab meets the surviving children, who are marked by the horrific visions of the combat they witnessed. After giving them pens to draw with and inviting them to play under the watchful eye of her camera, the director is faced with a bitter realization: they no longer know any other game than that of war, and it will soon become a profession for them as well.Read More »