Discoveries from Lebanon World Cinema

As an electronic war erupts in the last decade of the 21st century, mankind returns to their pre-historic primitiveness and the ages-old jealousy-inspired conflict between brother and brother over a woman erupts again.

Visually mesmerising film about the struggle of those who remain, the ones who stay stuck and are left with only memories when everything is destroyed and rebuilt.

An old Beirut resident checks the obituaries page and attends funerals daily. His "mourning" routine reveals a journey of grieving and accepting the loss of a loved one, a home and a city.

A DOCUMENT OF LEBANON'S BATTLES AGAINST ZIONISM AND IMPERIALISM

Expressing desire, pursuing dreams, loving oneself, questioning the oppressive confines of patriarchy. Farida Baqi takes us on a lyrical and emotional journey through the life of a young woman from birth to adulthood in an unnamed Arab city.

A girl gets ready to go out, she invites you into her feminine and whimsical world of frills and ribbons. A rather extravagant looking character comes out.

Sham is constantly writing letters and stacking them on her desk. She has to live two lives: A journey is filled with self-love, acceptance, and peace, and another is filled with misery and self-doubt. Will she send the letters, or will they stay unsent?

Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice: from land and from labour. Displaced from Haifa to Beirut, then again to Zirku Island, an offshore oil platform and work camp in the Arab gulf. A Stone’s Throw is a story of memories and disappearances, of trespassing borders, archives and private property to reveal the more than human relations that survive colonial space-time.

On a sunny day, 11-year-old Firas resists his father’s gender-based expectations during a bird-hunting trip in the Lebanese mountainside

While on a quest for his father’s medicine in Lisbon, a Lebanese filmmaker acquires a secondhand video camera. In the rays of the spring sun, this short film shares the people, words and ideas he encounters on this rather trivial journey set to a relaxing rhythm.

After the August 4th Beirut port explosion, a judicial reform brings about the first trial by jury in Lebanon where 12 citizens are about to decide the fate of an illegal Syrian refugee accused of brutally killing a social activist known for helping the damaged community after the blast. Will they be able to put aside their old beliefs and prejudices to offer an impartial verdict?

The Sabra and Shatila quarters are part of the Lebanese capital Beirut, which was rocked by a violent explosion in 2020, plunging Lebanon into the worst economic crisis in its history. In the poor districts, once provisionally built for Palestinian refugees, the residents live at a subsistence level without papers, without civil rights, without prospects. The documentary weaves the stories of the three families Kujeyje, Daher, Abeed and that of the young father Aboodi Ziani into a searing portrait of life in a city on the brink. The filmmakers accompanied their protagonists over a four-year period between 2018 and 2022 and show how the poorest of the poor firsthand felt the consequences of the gigantic port explosion, Lebanon's historic economic crisis, the corona pandemic and the ever-growing refugee quota. But unmistakable qualities like resilience and hope allow them to survive.

On the 14th of February, 1985, and after the Battle of Alman(Lebanon) took place, many fighters were lost in this battle and their fate is not known until today. Mustafa tries to trace the fate of his brother, who was one of the missing in this battle, exploring the aftermath of the absence of his brother "Mohamed", this documentary explains the family's lack of knowledge, about determining the fate of her son, Mohamed who has been absent for more than four decades.

A woman is informed of the death of her dream and embarks on a journey meandering between her inner and outer reality. An oneiric quest across land and sea, this video poem is an act of exorcism of a past that failed, where places of constant motion become home.

Maïa, a young opera singer, is on stage for her first performance. As she starts singing the main aria from "Dido and Aeneas", she finds herself struck with a moment of sudden revelation.

The Wall mixes documentary testimony with dramatic elements, using the backdrop of everyday life in East Beirut during the 80's civil war to look at ideas of fear and security.

A young woman becomes anxious at the news of the return of her husband, who disappeared 30 years ago during the civil war.

A conversation between two strangers: one is ashore and the other is on the sea. The conversation’s depth coincides with the height of the railing. Their interdependence is apparent and described in different speeds. The filmmaker’s thoughts become apparent. The ship’s departure accelerates the conversation. Finally, the ship sets sail.

Zuhdi Al Adawi, a Palestinian artist imprisoned in the occupied territories, uses his art as his means of expression and is helped by the rest of the community and his own family to accomplish his artwork.

Farès is a farmer in a small remote village of the Lebanese mountains. He works on the land with the help of his wife Salma and their three children. One day, he wins a contest organised by a brand of paper hankies, and receives a present in an enormous wooden crate. The unexpected gift is destined to change things forever in this once peaceful little village.

Every year, thousands of Shia Muslims meet in the village of Nabatiyyeh in Lebanon to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, assassinated in 680 A.D. It is by far the most important religious event in the Shia cult, and leads to the formation of immense mass movements all around the world. Mystic Mass describes extensively this 24h ceremony, and deconstructs its indivisible, ever united, mystic mass, since its formation early in the morning of Ashoura, up to its dissolution in the afternoon of the same day.

An amazing discovery will determine Ahmad to take a difficult and important decision, which will change the course of his life and the life of his family. In the same time, this decision will create an exceptional portray of Beirut today and give Ahmad the opportunity to enter again the world of the old Beirut (before 1975 war), this city that he always dreams to visit…

Audiovisual poetic essay film featuring the Électricité du Liban building.

Produced by the Palestine Cinema Institute in Beirut and directed by Iraqi filmmaker Samir Nimr, the film is titled after the small village of Kufr Shuba in South Lebanon–site of a powerful act of solidarity between the Lebanese people and the Palestinian resistance following a battle that devastated the village. The film stands as a poetic testament to the steadfastness of a people, their liberation struggle, and their love for the land.

A young boy’s whimsical friendship unveils a journey of exploration and the fleeting wonder of youth.

A mesh between moving image and material practice underscore a mapping, witnessing, sensing and ethnographic practice through which the governing forces along this territory would unfold. Fabrics are dyed using natural dyes extracted from the river’s ecology, using the river itself to abstract the fabrics, shown alongside a filmwork following the drive towards the Wazzani River. The alterations that are now embedded in the evolving process of the land and are exacted on it by the different outwardly interferences, position the environment in an elsewhere realm, in between opposing spaces, occupied by military surveillance and concrete animosity. It becomes an absent witness, or a witness of absence, around which culminates secrecy.

Nowadays, Beirut is often deprived of electricity. It is not a one-time accident but a new state. In the national museum, visitors find themselves in darkness and use their phones to light the traces of past civilizations as their world crumbles.

In the midst of the rubble of a torn building, a reel of film. An unlikely unraveling of queer bodies taking shape and form, while the war-torn city around and its spectacle of toxic masculinity glitches and disintegrates.

In 1929, Roger Salardenne wrote Le culte de la nudité based on nudist experiments in Weimar Germany. Accompanied by a troop of completely naked actors in the confined space of a house, Selim Mourad offers a free adaptation of this text.

Lionel Andres Messi

A Lakit is a human without nationality, home, parents or even surname. He has no right to study, work, travel. But above all, he is a human being and therefore he has a future.

Boushra, one of the potato-picking girls, returns from a long day of work in the field only to learn that today her childhood will come to an end.

Chaghig Arzoumanian is 27, but she could be a thousand years old; it is her voice-over that we hear telling her family’s past with its accumulation of first names, stories, journeys and photographs handed down to her in snippets, through hearsay and anecdotes. Her Armenian genealogy, which is of mythical proportions, becomes re-inscribed in today’s landscapes.

The film blends horror and mystery to reveal the hidden changes that transformed the face of the Earth."

In Arsal, Lebanon, the film unveils the myriad challenges facing Syrian refugee children and their families. Beyond the struggles, silent acts of hope by a compassionate teacher echo an ambitious desire for a brighter, happier generation.

the devil firework

Toufic, a widower in his ‘80s, answers the phone to be told of yet another friend who has died. He is lost in mournful contemplation when a beautiful woman mistakenly knocks on his door with a parcel, awakening something long dormant in Toufic. He consults with his grocery store owner's charming son Roni who introduces him to a dating application. Toufic is primed to swipe right on every pretty young face, but the absurdity of real life intervenes.

Mummy Blue explores how memories, particularly traumatic ones are passed on from one generation to another, and how profoundly populations of people can be affected. Dina escapes her turbulent relationship with her mother by fantasizing about the boy next door. Will this satisfy her coming of age and ease her pain?

A young woman navigates the corridors of her past, exploring the chambers of her memories.

Jocelyne Saab toured the city of Beirut devastated by Israeli bombings. She assesses the number of victims and the extent of the destruction.

Alain and Mira, a couple that has been together for five years, decide to have a heart-to-heart about life. They plunge into a thought-provoking conversation in which they question their own relationship and its destiny, while simultaneously reflecting on their collapsed homeland, Lebanon. They seek freedom and happiness, but would they truly reach that by escaping their country? Among all this instability and destruction surrounding them, will love alone be enough to keep them afloat?

“Disaster ruins everything while leaving everything as it is,wrote Maurice Blanchot. Everything.” - Ghassan Salhab. From the southern districts of Beirut to southern Lebanon, a car winds its way through the devastated country. No title for such desolation.

A short film made by Vladimir Tamari following the first anniversary of the occupation of Arab Jerusalem by the Israeli army at the start of the Arab Israeli War on June 5, 1967. Using footage from UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) cinema archives where he worked as a technician, Tamari edited this film and organized its narration and addition of music by his friends, all volunteers and amateurs as he was, in order to express the feelings of the Palestinians at the loss of their capital city and center of their spiritual, commercial and intellectual life.

In the year 2052, artificial intelligence takes over. Jack parts on a quest to save mankind and reunite with his daughter.

On August 4, 2020, an explosion devastated the port of Beirut and part of the city. Two hundred people lost their lives. Five thousand were seriously injured. Three hundred thousand were displaced. Following the disaster, we set out to find three port workers who had appeared in one of our films ten years earlier.

Jobless and stripped of any prospects of a normal life in Lebanon, Wael tries to kill himself on August 4th 2020, not knowing that a few moments later something big will happen… Beirut will explode.

Audiovisual view for decisive days in a life of a lightly hearing person.

A correspondence between two lovers from two mediterranean cities, a forbidden letter given for the sea to carry. Phone Echo is the search for a common language, one that fights against erasure with tenderness and the other that witnesses the violence that it faces.

Tragedy strikes when the Zayyad family loses its patriarch under mysterious circumstances, leaving the surviving members to fend for themselves within a judgmental community in Southern Lebanon.

Nay’s secret outing with Youssef turns dangerous when Sami believes he’s seen his sister Christine with a man. The misunderstanding spirals into suspicion and rage. When Nay warns Christine, it’s too late, Sami storms in, and the confrontation escalates to a tragic, irreversible end.

A struggle for life and for love.

The film blends horror and mystery to reveal the hidden changes that transformed the face of the Earth."

In Beirut, actors audition for a film based on a soldier’s diary written in Jerusalem in 1915. They interpret scenes, reflect on the First World War and the present-day, and explore longing, identity and memory.