Beirut in 2011. The city remains strangely quiet while the region is in great turmoil. Through five characters, mainly non-professional actors, Lamia Joreige creates a unique portrayal of her native town. Whether a salesman, a musician, a student or an actor, each one expresses his/her deep attachment to Beirut and inability to live there. Over several months, the director asked them to act out scenes she had imagined, inspired by their love affairs, professional lives and friendships. Constructing a fiction with their daily lives, she highlights their malaise. These scenes were performed in the area in which they live, in the places that are dear to them. The city and their feelings are deeply intertwined. The beauty of the images and the sweetness of their lives conceal anxieties over political instability in the Middle East and fear of a devastating war.
En Compétition internationale au FID Marseille festival du 30 juin au 6 juillet 2015
With : Mireille Kassar, Firas Beydoun, Anna Ogden-Smith, Raïa Haidar & Tarek Atoui
Author : Lamia Joreige
Photography : Rachel Aoun
Sound : Cédric Ayem, Maurice Lattouf & Sephane Rives
Editing : Wardan (Vartan Avakian)
Original soundtrack : Tarek Atoui, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Sharif Maurice, Charbel Haber & Mireille Kassar – interprète François Couperin et Grigor Marekatsi
Mixage : Rana Eid & Nadim Mishlawi / DB Studio
Producer : Serge Lalou & Patricia Cartier-Millon – Les Films d’Ici
Partners : Taymour Grahne Gallery – New York City, Young Arab Theater Fund – Bruxelles & Musée Nicéphore Nièpce – Chalon-sur-Saône
Langue : Arabe
Available version : VOSTVA
Length : 75′
Format : DCP
Raïa Haïdar 