Discoveries from Lebanon World Cinema

When Abu Sayyah decides to travel to Beirut in search for a trading opportunity, he meets a filming crew and falls in love with one of the actresses, who aspires to be the film star. He decides to produce the film for her sake, but the girl warns him against it.

In Clotheslined, the viewer is invited into the intimate chronicle of the lives of Fares, Souad and Mira, a family in modern-day Lebanon as told by the clothesline on their balcony terrasse. In a way, the film is the story of the clothesline as it narrates, from its own perspective, the beginnings, the joys, the laughter, but also the sadness and hardships, and all the unforeseen challenges that life dishes out to this family of three and their surroundings.

A woman who works as a DJ is known to live alone and has her own messy world, but when she meets a teacher who is always serious and well organized, the contradiction between their personalities result in many comedic situations.

In a war-ravaged Syrian neighborhood, a musician struggles to rebuild his piano after it is destroyed by terrorists.

Wanted is a very human comedy about four old people who run away from a nursing home in the name of love and solidarity.

In recent years, Lebanese municipalities have imposed curfews restricting the freedom of movement of Syrian workers, who are thus prohibited from walking the streets after dark. Filmed in Lebanon, Lebanese Nights highlights the different facets of Lebanese and Syrian experiences related to curfew, through a gallery of places and characters: from local residents to migrant workers to sectarian vigilantes who impose their own curfew.

A former Interior Security Forces General of 80 years old, and a former Army doctor of 84, go every day to the same coffee shop, to sip quietly their espresso, and to make crossword puzzles, to avoid loss of memory, Alzheimer's disease.

Amid Lebanon’s relentless political and economic chaos, Samer plans a private day with his girlfriend Rana while his parents are away. Their day takes a dark turn as they navigate unexpected visitors, hallucinations, and the harsh realities of their environment. As tensions rise, Samer and Rana confront their fears, desires, and the societal pressures that shape their lives, ultimately facing a pivotal moment in their relationship.

Remains is a movie about the struggle of those who remain, the ones who stay stuck and are left with only memories when everything is destroyed and rebuilt.

The two brothers Ghassan and Nabil are wrestling champions. As Ghassan prepares to wed Laila, Nabil dedicates himself to the game, but his love for Suzy weakens his spirits. But Suzy is the sister of Samy who got paralyzed after a game with the brothers, and Suzy is his way to get revenge.

Lebanon, July 2006. War is raging between Hezbollah and Israel. During a 24h ceasefire, Marwan heads out in search of his father who refused to leave his Southern village. As the ceasefire is quickly broken, Marwan finds himself under the rain of bombs and takes shelter in a house with a group of elders. Suddenly, a group of Israeli soldiers enter the first floor. Trapped in the house and hostages of their own fears, the next three days will see the situation spiral out of control.

Lebanon. Summer 2010. War is looming. Zeina and Toufic have been together for several years; but Toufic is preparing to leave the country...

It's autumn. A man and a woman are about to leave a restaurant situated in the heart of the Lebanese mountains. They are suprised by fighter planes screaming past at low altitude. In the distance, war seems to be breaking out once more. Losing sight of the woman, the man starts looking for her. He finds her on the other side of the mountain. Together they sink deeper into nature, which becomes increasingly spectral, just like the slender thread that ties them to each other.

Beyrouth, spring 2020. Is the uprising in Lebanon merely on hold?

In Differdange, in the South of Luxembourg, six unemployed men decide to create the "Dole Club", whose rules forbid its members to work, even in the very unlikely event that they are offered a job. Geronimo, Théid, Frunnes, Sonny Boy, Abbes and Petz all agree to abide by the strict regulations of the club. In accordance with them, they manage to survive. But they can do it only on petty theft and other swindles, which is bound to end badly...

The film tells the story of three girls who have had a close relationship for several years, and once love looms, the three fall into a never-ending series of irony.

"Nasr Hamed Abou Zayd is not Godot, and the expectation promised by the title is misleading: this great gentleman is present in almost every shot. Who is he? An Egyptian Muslim theologian of international reputation, he has published exegeses of the Koran which led to his being condemned for apostasy. Exile, forced divorce from his wife Ibtihal Younes since his marriage was subject to annulment, separation from his son, such are the consequences of his writings. But Abou Zayd has not given up, residing in Leiden in the Netherlands, he continues, always on the road, to give conferences, to explain with great serenity his positions in public debates, on television, etc. C It is this particularly impressive dedication that Mohammad Ali Atassi's camera recorded over a period of six years.

An intimate, and often humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family in the lives of those for whom dispossession is the norm, and yearning their daily lives.

Fleeing the war in Syria, a group of women and girls carve out a future that has become a business in the harsh lands of Lebanon.

Nada and Rabieh are a Palestinian couple living far from the possibility of a homeland. A meditation on time, memory, and the distance from a dream. A dialogue with Masao Adachi and Koji Wakamatsu’s (1971) Red Army/PFLP: A Declaration of World War. Available to watch here: https://vimeo.com/77014813/9ecc802aef

17-year-old Nayla in a hot summer day on the southern seaside of Lebanon is faced with the same dilemma as any other young person in Lebanon: to leave or to stay. Two men in her life who have set ideas about it might get surprised.

The film tells the story of Issam, a mysterious man who lives in the wilderness on the edge of a village, and the villagers consider him a frightening thief, at the same time Lin comes from the city to this village, to bury her grandmother next to her old house. It is shocking facts.

Following the death of his mother, 9-year-old Elias goes to extreme lengths to naively bring her back from Jesus’ heaven all while defying his faith…

Lulu was charged with the murder of a man named Younes, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, after which she was found innocent, so she returned to her hometown intending to take revenge on those who testified against her. She met Jerji, a shoe polisher, and told him her story, Jerji spread the news of her release from prison in the town, and people were busy threatening her and spent their time worrying and afraid of her revenge.

After a mysterious event, Adam’s house falls apart, trapping him in his past and thoughts. To escape, he must confront the chaos in his mind.

‘Objects of War’ is a series of testimonials on the Lebanese war. Each person chooses an object, ordinary or unusual, which serves as a starting point for his / her story. These testimonials while helping to create a collective memory, also show the impossibility of telling a single History of this war. Only fragments of this History are recounted here, held as truth by those expressing them. In ‘Objects of War’, the aim is not to reveal a truth but rather to gather and confront many diverse versions and discourses on the subject. ‘Objects of War’ started in 1999 assembling the testimonials of eleven persons. It was first shown in 2000 . It continued in 2003 with ‘Objects of War n°2’, recording seven additional testimonials. This time however, and since then, the recorded material is left unedited, shown in its integrity. The work of collecting and assembling these stories continued with ‘Objects of War n°3 & n°4’ in 2006 and ‘n°5 & 6’ in 2014.

Abducted during the Lebanese Civil War and now in his 50s, Ramez is finally a free man. But he returns to society deeply traumatized by the past.

The distant relationship between a grandmother and her grandchild is momentarily disrupted, after an unforeseen devastation occurs in the city of Beirut.

A girl tries to remember her childhood nightmare

Beirut, Lebanon. Hassan is assembling wooden boards. His wife is dead. He is building her coffin. Tamara and Rami, the children, in their twenties, are helping him as best they can to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her childhood village, abandoned for more than 20 years.

An archaeologist goes to Mount Lebanon to excavate antiquities. There, he spots a Bedouin girl and falls madly in love with her. She falls in love with him at first sight, but she is engaged to her cousin. The young Egyptian man tries to propose to her father, but the father refuses, according to tribal traditions. Coincidence brings the two lovers together in Beirut, and the young archaeologist knows that she will be married to his cousin.

“Entrée d’Artistes” is an astonishing documentary about jazz, swing and dance music in Luxembourg between the Twenties and the Sixties. The first orchestras performed at the fair, at the Alpha, at the International,… ; jazz, considered “negro” music and banned during the Nazi occupation, was prerogative of cabaret,… “Entrée d’Artistes” retraces that fine period using archive images, interviews and reconstructions but also by having the musicians of that era rediscover it (Tommy Dallimore, Andy Felten, Johnny Glesener, Jean Roderes, Camille Back, and others).

A famed Hollywood actress from Lebanon walks viewers through the pivotal steps she took to achieve international success in her career, until she is forcefully disrupted by the unexpected.

In Beirut, a couple in their early thirties turn their window into a front-row seat to the steamy lives of the neighbors across the street. What begins as witty play-by-play and harmless voyeurism quickly backfires: the more they watch, the more their own dormant sex life comes under the spotlight. As jokes sharpen into accusations, desire, ego, and resentment collide, exposing the cracks in their intimacy.

Text messages to a boyfriend in Roanne, everyday conversation with parents in Beirut, the life in Copenhagen. A love letter painted with isolation of living in a foreign land and the intimate time spent together with the director's loved ones.

A free adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's short story "A Hero in a Cell." Kanafani's original text explores the difficulties of constructing a political narrative while examining the nuanced relationship between political discourse and storytelling. The adaptation presents a political narrative that prioritizes visual and auditory elements over conventional dramatic techniques.

A young man's tragic death at Beirut's seaside causes his friends to grapple with loss and to partake in his community's rites and ceremonies, exposing the city's schisms and its society's fault lines

Ali, a delinquent, is living a chaotic life. His life changes when he meets Souraya, a prostitute threatened by Jacques, a mob guy who is having problems at home. One day, while driving him in his cab to his office, Maroun notices their extreme resemblance. The choices of some and the destinies of others meet and change their existences.

In 1975, the Lebanese wars started when Maroun Bagdadi ended his first feature film "Beirutya Beirut". Did the war give an identity to Lebanese cinema? Productions of documentaries, action movies, actor films, co-productions, and emigration. Since 1975, the war has remained a major subject for feature fiIms shot in Lebanon. This is a history of stories about war and cinema.

Although Hassan has retired from his job at the water authority, his neighbors are used to him always helping them out. This time, the situation is serious: The entire town is without water, and tensions are rising among the population with every passing day. Hassan would like to help them all, but he also needs time to mourn a friend who recently died under unclear circumstances. Lebanese director Karim Kassem skillfully works with various cinematic genres to create an elegant double portrait of an aging man and the town of which he has been a part all his life. He does so with a sense of nostalgia, subtle humor, and an almost meditative melancholy, mixed with a touch of detective work.

In a world where even his brothers in arms are against him, 38-years-old Police officer Rawad Fakhoury executes a mission impossible to provide a kidney for his dying daughter. The clock is ticking while there's no one to trust but himself.

Tango of Yearning (1998) is the first episode of an autobiographical trilogy on postwar Lebanon, later including Nightfall (2000) and Civil War (2002). Taking its title from Tango of Hope, a classic ballad by Nur al-Huda, the film draws from the director’s reflections on war, love, and cinema, as well as his personal experience at the public television channel TéléLiban. Conjuring various snippets of audiovisual archival material, the film is a poetic elegy to film, Beirut’s movie theaters, and a city undergoing radical transformation. Mohamed Soueid has long been a proponent of the experimental video documentary movement in Lebanon, playing a significant role in the country’s creative renaissance since the end of the civil war. Originally trained as a news videographer during the war, the experience offered him a facility with the medium, which he further developed by making non-linear documentary films with a distinctly personal take.

Through poetic visual and aural fragmentation, This Dissonance navigates the emotional terrain of exile, colonialism, and resistance. The film weaves Palestinian and Lebanese voices with sweeping “American” landscapes, capturing the aching dissonance of witnessing U.S.-backed atrocities from afar, and resulting in a searing reflection on the generational toll of empire.

A poor farmer finds a huge jewel buried in the mud, aided by one of the village's elderly men. They find themselves at a loss as the jewel is so huge that there is no buyer for it and thieves are trying to seize it, but they fail while greedy merchants are trying to buy it cheaply.

The events begin when a famous singer suffers a crisis when he loses the ability to sing, due to a plot by his beloved Nadia, whom he betrayed. He feels extremely desperate, and at the same time there is a deranged person chasing him. Nadia withdraws herself and tries to help her lover again. Will she succeed?

Musa lives with his father, Beko, in rural Turkey. Beko, struggling to make ends meet by assisting in rabbit-hound races, is lured by the promise of a government disability pension for Musa if he can prove his son's “disability” with a medical report. To pass as disabled, Musa must learn to mimic the mannerisms of people with physical disabilities from Nergis, a girl his age. Together, the two children form an enduring friendship as they navigate their plight.

Many people first became aware of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon after the shocking and horrific Sabra-Shatila massacre that took place there in 1982. Located in Beirut's "belt of misery," the camp is home to 15,000 Palestinians and Lebanese who share a common experience of displacement, unemployment and poverty. Fifty years after the exile of their grandparents from Palestine, the children of Shatila attempt to come to terms with the reality of being refugees in a camp that has survived massacre, siege and starvation. Director Mai Masri focuses on two Palestinian children in the camp: Farah, age 11 and Issa, age 12. When these children are given video cameras, the story of the camp evolves from their personal narratives as they articulate the feelings and hopes of their generation.

In the late 1960s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, anti-imperialist guerrilla movement. Director Heiny Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, to reach the conflict zone and capture this rare record of a now mostly-forgotten war.

In search of an adventure, a bored billionaire trades his five-star life for a less lavish one, but an unexpected romance soon leaves him conflicted.

Josephine, the matriarch of a sprawling family, is delighted to gather everyone for Easter lunch for the first time in two years. While they all share a joyful meal, an incident ignites underlying tensions between the family members and leads them gradually into chaos.

A failed Syrian inventor named Ziad Jamal is suffering from poverty and lack of faith from others, and his failure to marry the girl he loves. He reads in a newspaper about an armed robbery by a gang, and decides to help the Police in catching them.

Two friends work as guards at a luxurious villa, whose owner only comes at long intervals. They turn it into a hotel but the owner suddenly comes with his fiancée, and he discovers the situation,causing funny situations to happen.

Ghassan Sidawi takes a trip to get to know more about a late friend of his family. While doing so, he learns what it feels to be a lost Palestinian artist from home.