The adolescent Alex lives with her mother Maia in Montreal. When a large box is delivered to their home during the Christmas holidays, Maia is unexpectedly confronted with her past. The box – which is full of letters, recordings, and photographs that she sent to her best friend in Beirut in the 1980s – forces her to explore past memories, something that she has been stubbornly avoiding, But Alex secretly begins to delve into her mother’s past on her own… In their film, shown in competition at this year’s Berlinale, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige masterfully traverse multiple timelines between Beirut and Montreal, showing Maia’s teenage years in Lebanon during the civil war and inventively presenting her memories and fleeting flashes of the past.