Montreal Short Films 2023
1st Session
Sunday June 4, 2023 - Cinema De Seve
Sugar Free
Dalida, a refined and elegant sixty-year-old, is devoted to her relationship with Marc, the love of her life, never missing their date, every Saturday afternoon. Mark is in his thirties, a dreamer who wants to explore the world, but what does he say about their love?
Director: Charbel El Melhem
Un pour huit
After a big battle with cancer, Carine has only one solution to save her life: organ transplant. In a country where everyone is born a donor, transplantation was a lifesaving answer. But if this French scenario was placed in a Lebanese setting, would Carine have had the chance to tell us her story?
Director: Lynn Tawilé
So Cool
In a corner of one of Beirut’ streets, Nathalie is closing the bar where she works in order to welcome her boyfriend, Amin. It is an important night for the couple. They’re going to celebrate him getting the role or his life in a huge feature film. But little did Nathalie know that Amin is also coming with a small news that will turn their night upside down.
Director: Marilyne Naaman
Black Mouse
Between 1962-1975, Oscar Niemeyer was commissioned to design the Tripoli International Fair. As the structure was on the verge of completion, the events of the 1970s transfigured the structure into something gargantuan, incomplete, and abandoned – a white elephant. A biker’s trip through Tripoli becomes the backdrop through which we explore these events from the standpoint of the city’s residents. Along his journey, the fair catches his eye. He approaches its gates only to enter a state of delirium and be taken on a sonic journey along the Orient Express. Niemayer takes a drag of his cigarette and waxes poetic. Somewhere along this stream of consciousness, he reflects on the relationship between structures and the society that surrounds them, eventually commenting on what has become of the thing he built.
Director: Ahmad Naboulsi
Leila and the Cigarette
In 2011, Leah decided to go to Lebanon to film with her grandmother. Two weeks after the shoot, her grandmother died of metastatic lung cancer. It took her 12 years to get the courage to revisit their last conversations. Through memories and poems she draws the portrait of her grandmother in homage to her unique character.
Director: Leah Manasseh
Scenes from Home
Through an interactive theatre group, Leila, Arafat and Rabaa, 3 Syrian refugees recreate stories from their past, present and future inspired by their journey from Syria to Jordan. The group is gathered on stage again seated in a circle, among them our 3 protagonists, they are all discussing a possibility of imagining a new scene from their future. Imagining where will they be in five or ten years, could there be an ending to an unfinished business, or a recreation of a turning point in their lives, or an imagination of a new beginning or a different end. By Playing different roles than who they are in real life, they will give themselves a new identity and look at their lives from a new and different perspective.
Director: Cynthia Sawma
2nd Session
Monday June 5, 2023 - Cinema Public
A Broken Fan
Adel, a desperate jobless father gets out on the streets of Beirut hoping for a change.
Director: Assaad Khoueiry
The Birds Have Left Beirut
Zeina, 40 year old mom of oliver 9 years old husband to rodolphe 43 years old living normally quietly in beirut until august 4 2020…the third most powerful explosion in history.
Director: Khalil Dreyfus ZAAROUR
Shattered
When everything is repaired from the outside, what do we do about the broken parts inside? This is the story of Yasmine. She often takes refuge in her imagination. After the Beirut explosion happens though, her coping mechanism does not work so well anymore…
Director: Elyssa Skaff
Bystander
On a sunny July day in Beirut, Roger, a beloved basketball coach is on his way to work proudly carrying a box of chocolates to celebrate the birth of his son. His trip is disrupted when he witnesses a horrific act of violence on the street. He observes without intervening from the safety of the pavement; not attempting to help. Roger’s descent into shame begins there. As he navigates between students and colleagues, accepting their congratulations and offering them chocolates, the guilt deepens. Each encounter brings an update on the victim’s condition, the incident is all over the news. By the first class of the day, Roger is a crushed man terrified to face the teenagers who idolize him.
Director: Rachel Aoun
Malika in Waiting
Within the boundaries of limited space, and through the visual repetition of gestures, the film transports us into the life of Malika, a migrant worker from Sri Lanka living in Beirut. As she traverses a transformative moment of grief and loss, Malika is immersed in a deep moment of introspection which gives her the strength to carry on. Her loneliness, paralleled with that of an elderly woman she works for, bridges the lives of these two polarizing women in their moments of despair and isolation. The unlikely friendship soon creates space for both women to find in each other a much-needed sense of comfort and resilience.
Director: Marlene Edoyan
3rd Session
Monday June 5, 2023 - Cinema de Seve
Introduction to Perfect Heists
Influenced by action-packed movies, Tarek and his friend Mazen try to execute the perfect Heist. While sharing his best tips and tricks, Tarek takes the audience on the ride. With an unexpected cashier, a hidden customer, a dreamy girl, and a less-than-competent partner, Tarek improvises.
Director: Chelsea Choukeir, Hussein Fneish
Room 16
During her breaks, Siham, a mute motel housekeeper, isolates herself in the attic overlooking Room 16. From her hiding place, she observes the customers without their knowledge thus discovering their secrets, their adventures and their obsessions. One day, an unexpected client, will turn her monotonous existence upside down.
Director: Dany K. Saliba
The Call
Leila, a Lebanese architecture student, and her mother Dana are based in the UK when they receive a call and find out an explosion has occurred in their home country Lebanon. The pair’s relationship is shaken upon hearing the news. Their inability to help their loved ones and their city bring to light the generational gap that deeply separates them. They must try to heal from the experience and find a resolution despite their conflicting views on whether to leave the UK and return to their family home in the heart of the devastation.
Director: Shireen Ayache
Heroes
“Heroes” is a documentary that showcases the stories of Jad, Jana, Dana, and Gus; four Lebanese individuals who continue to push forward despite the ongoing political and economic turmoil in their country. Through their struggles, the documentary highlights the resilience and determination of all Lebanese people inspiring others to keep going despite insurmountable challenges of modern-day Lebanon.
Director: John Abi Farah
L'arbre
Super 8mm and 16mm footage and expired cartridges found and shot in Quebec reflect on words written in Beirut to create a melancholic postcard between both worlds.
Director: Chantal Partamian
4th Session
Tuesday June 6, 2023 - Cinema de Seve
The Sun Sets On Beirut
Mounia, in her mid-20s, is joined by her best friend Ghady to find her cat that has been missing since the August 2020 Beirut Blast. But while he is more interested in chatting up British journalist Olivia, Mounia is determined to look at the reality of the aftermath in order to find her cat.
Director: Daniela Stephan
Breakup In 3D
Between Paris, Brussels, and Berlin, 3 Lebanese girls are facing the same situation, a break-up. ‘’Rupture en 3D’’ is a short documentary that tackles 3 different angles of a break-up in order to finally reunite and show the similarities of the human heart break.
Director: Patrick Elias
21 FEBRUARY
A series of unfortunate events reshape the life of Ingrid for the past 25 years. However, in 2022 she ends up discovering their hidden miraculous cause in her visual self-portrait.
Director: Ingrid El Zoghby
Our beautiful eyes
Why did they choose us “us, students from a third world” to be part of this cinema school in Paris? And what can we film in here? A place where we don’t belong. Fatima leads an investigation.
Director: Fatima Joumaa
Thorn
Not all that glitters is gold.. When a sinner longs for the innocence in him, despite the liberation of the body, the soul remains shackled in search of itself. Resisting the pain becomes a pleasure!
Director: Pauline Gaby El Nawwar
The Lump
Nour’s body lays down in the emptiness of her own basement as her mind speaks one of her most intimate incidents.
Director: Rouba Noureddine
A person becomes an object
After a long time of caring for her ailing father, a young woman fights her emotions and the numbness that comes with impending loss. As her father’s death looms closer, she spirals in her own way.
Director: Julie Chalhoub
A Moment Between Silence & Chaos
Parents Fadi and Maya, alone for the first time in 20 years after their kid Ghadi has left the country, try to still feel involved in their child’s life while also confronted with the reality of their relationship.
Director: Omar Ziad Seaibi
5th Session
Thursday June 8, 2023 - Cinema de Seve
A Loving Mom
This is a representative situation of the Lebanese circumstances in which Mom is obsessed in keeping her family in good hygiene but the naughtiness of “little son” didn’t let Mom finish cleaning with the vacuum cleaner at time due to the electric power outage. MOM has to adapt to the blackout so she sent “big son “to go steal electricity from the generator of the neighborhood. This idea was pleasant to the neighbor and decide to do the same. Those transgressions lead all the neighborhood into a complete darkness
Director: Ribal Abi Raad
Restless Mind
Restless Mind evokes memories of a senior person at the end of his life, depicting the transition moments between life and death through a photograph that he took with his family when they were together. The film is a tribute to my father who was sick living his end.
Director: Bachar Bachoura
RIND
Distracted by the mundane happenings of her everyday life, she notices bad habits that were otherwise overlooked. These hovering obsessions take over her struggle to function and disrupts her focus. Her repetitive behavior takes charge of her mind and the way she views her body.
Director: Romy Matar
Tanki Tanki
“Tanki Tanki” uses archival footage from Lebanese television, edited to René Bandali’s song of the same title, to recount the mutation of past consumerist imagery into a haunting representation of an illusive present. The Lebanese subjects’ desire portrayed in these visual rhetorics was hijacked by a scheming political/bourgeois class that is still indulging in its despotism.
Director: Hassane Chami
Doigts de fée
“Doigts de fée” is a documentary that tells the journey of my son, who, despite his differences, was able to grow, face challenges, and fulfill himself. It portrays the son whom I accompanied, transitioning from a feeling of helplessness to pride and fascination.
Director: Siham Kortas
