MONTREAL SHORT FILMS 2023

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.

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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