Day 1
Saturday June 11
COSTA BRAVA LEBANON
(By Mounia Akl)
The free-spirited Badri family have escaped the toxic pollution and social unrest of Beirut by seeking refuge in the utopic mountain home they have built. But unexpectedly, a garbage landfill is built right outside their fence, bringing the trash and corruption of a whole country to their doorstep. As the landfill rises, so do tensions between leaving or resisting, threatening their idyllic home and family unity.
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Day 2
Sunday June 12
THE PROPHET
(By Roger Allers)
Exiled artist and poet Mustafa embarks on a journey home with his housekeeper and her daughter. Together, the trio must evade the authorities who fear that the truth in Mustafa’s words will incite rebellion.
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I'M NOT LAKIT
(By Marie Surae)
According to an Islamic dictionary, a lakit is an illegitimate abandoned child. According to Lebanese law, he is absolutely disenfranchised. Saleh has no right to education or travel. He has no right to obtain a passport or any document. He has been in jail several times because he has no documents. By law, Saleh can’t have a surname, he can just invent one. In a country with 18 officially recognised religions he can’t join any of them. The state punished Saleh just for being born. In the film we will talk about Saleh’s present and past. We will introduce him to his brother and try to imagine Saleh’s future. We will answer the question of why free and democratic Lebanon still has the lakit law.
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FARAH
(By Hassiba Freiha, Kenton Oxley)
When pre-med student, Lina, starts experiencing severe recurring nightmares, her life begins to crumble and she is then sent home to Beirut, Lebanon. She is prescribed the controversial antidepressant ‘Xapa’ – also known in its illegal form as ‘Joy’ – to help her recover.
However, as Lina’s alarming nightmares continue to worsen and a link between them and her birth mother, Farah, becomes clear, she sets out on a quest to uncover a web of family secrets which will lead her to a shattering ultimate truth.
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Day 3
Monday June 13
THE BLUE INMATES
(By Zeina Daccache)
This is the 3rd documentary by Zeina Daccache produced and shot in Lebanese Prisons (her previous internationally awarded films lobbied and made changes to the Lebanese penal code articles). The current film follows inmates in Roumieh Prison (Lebanon) who produced a theatre play inside prison about their fellow inmates suffering from mental illness and residing in the same Prison. Unfortunately the Lebanese Penal Code, enacted in 1943, stipulates that “Insane”, “Mad” or “Possessed” offenders shall be incarcerated in a special psychiatry unit until evidence of “being cured”, however mental illness is managed and never cured… Therefore mentally ill offenders are practically receiving a life sentence…
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Day 4
Tuesday June 14
SHORT FILMS (SESSION 3)
THE ANGER
(By Maria Ivanova Z.)
The plot unwraps in Lebanon. A young Muslim girl Ida flees her small village to escape her drinking mother and start over in the city. There she meets a charismatic older European man Hans thinking she has found salvation, peace and love in him. At first, they seem like a perfect couple. Hans proposes to Ida and moves in with her. Ida is happy. She is in love and can’t see how Hans is slowly changing. The climax of the film is Ida renouncing her religion. “Will everything go back to normal if I do it?” Ida asks. “Of course, dear, it will be even better,” says Hans. After that the events of the film are developing rapidly and unexpectedly. The originality of the idea comes from the story being told through a prism of a Middle Eastern country. The film touches upon a very relevant topic of East vs. West through the relationship between an Eastern girl and a Western man.
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Day 5
Wednesday June 15
BEIRUT HOLD'EM
(By Michel Kammoun)
Beirut Hold’em depicts the life of Ziko, a 40-year old ex-con and petty gambler, and his three boyhood friends, in a seedy, lower-middle class district of Beirut. Released from prison, Ziko wants to restart his life. With his back against the wall, Ziko faces all the challenges in one go. But everyone knows that, once a gambler, always a gambler. But Ziko’s biggest fight turns out to be his inner struggle. Driven by a never-ending determination and a relentless will to survive, he sets out on his journey through contemporary post-war Lebanese society, a place made of an incongruous mixture of violence and tenderness, a country on the edge of war and bankruptcy, where instability makes everyday life feel like a circus trapeze, and sheer existence is yet another form of gambling.
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Day 6
Thursday June 16
DAUGHTERS OF ABDULRAHMAN
(By Zaid Abu Hamdan)
In a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Amman, single and middle-aged Zainab lives a dreary existence as a local seamstress and her father’s keeper. After her father accidentally sees her in a wedding dress she is altering for her cousin – Zainab wakes up and finds her father missing – a man who gave reason for her existence.
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