With this year’s A Week of Lebanese cinema, the KVIFF ties in with its successful series of previous years (Young Greek Cinema or A Female Take on Russia) and presents a programme of eight titles filmed over the last 25 years in a country with one of the longest cinematic histories in the Middle East.
The selection will be ushered in by an absorbing drama about the abduction of a French journalist, Hors la vie (1991), for which director Maroun Bagdadi received the Jury Prize in Cannes. Director and actress Nadine Labaki has won over audiences with the gentle humour and enchantingly picturesque approach she takes to serious issues, best depicted in her second film Where Do We Go Now (2011).
One of the biggest hits in the history of Lebanese cinema, good-humoured drama West Beirut (1998), remembers the beginning of the long Civil War. The documentary film Sleepless Nights (2012) also deals with echoes of this conflict, as is the acclaimed drama A Perfect Day (2006). A vivid indictment of destructive military conflict, Under the Bombs, emerged a year after the outbreak of the 2006 Lebanese War.
The love lives of two girls in their twenties in modern Beirut are portrayed in an intimate documentary E muet (2011). The programme will end with The Valley (2014) that takes an original look at the theme of the “man without a past“.
