Sector Zero | القطاع صفر

Directed by Nadim Mishlawi | Running time: 70 min

Awards: First prize Muhr Arab Documentary – Dubai International Film Festival 2011


On the outskirts of Beirut, between the City’s port and its densely populated center, lies the notorious, now derelict, area of Karantina. Through an exploration of this neglected urban wasteland, Sector Zero examines the area’s peculiar history, using it as a metaphor for Lebanon’s own troubled past. Sector Zero is not so much a documentation as it is an investigation into the dark corners of modern Lebanon’s collective memory in an attempt to discover how much of who we are is based largely on that part of ourselves we have chosen to forget.

Now showing at Metropolis daily at 22:00

Ok, Enough, Goodbye | طيب، خلص، يلا

Directed by Rania Attieh & Daniel Garcia | Running time: 93 min

Awards: Black pearl award for Best New Director from the Arab world – Abu Dhabi International Film Festival 2011


In the small, tightly knit city of Tripoli, Lebanon, where family bonds run very deep, a forty-something man still lives with his elderly mother and has given up on the idea of becoming independent. But when one day his mother suddenly leaves him, the man is left with nothing but the company of a city and what it offers.

The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni | اختفاءات سعاد حسني الثلاثة

Directed by Rania Stephan | Running time: 70 min

Awards: Renaud Victor prize – Marseille International Film Festival 2011, and Best Arab Documentary filmmaker – Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2011


The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni is a rapturous elegy to a rich and versatile era of film production in Egypt which has lapsed today, through the work of one of its most revered actress and star: Soad Hosni, who from the early 1960 into the 90s, embodied the modern Arab woman in her complexity and paradoxes.

Born in Cairo in 1943, Soad Hosni committed suicide in London in 2001. Between the ages of 19 to 49, she played in eighty-two feature films with thirty-seven directors. Inspired by her rags to riches story, she was given the nickname ‘The Cinderella of Arab cinema’; she was the daughter, sister, friend, fiancée, lover and wife to illustrious stars of Egyptian cinema when it was the chief purveyor of cinematic fiction in the Arab world.

Now showing at Metropolis daily at 15:00, 17:00, and 19:30

My father is still a communist | أبي ما زال شيوعيا

Directed by Ahmad Ghossein | Running time: 32 min


Mariam is the mother of 4 kids, her husband Rachid worked abroad for more than 10 years.

From 1978 until 1988, Mariam’s way of corresponding with her husband was through sending recording radio cassettes with people traveling. The cassettes provide intimate and personal details of how a relationship evolve between a couple through the passing of time, and how this relationship start changing to become challenging.

Mariam is trying to restore her memory while building her house, seeing the kids growing up in the absence of the father.

Now showing at Metropolis daily at 16:15, 19:15, and 21:45.

Then the movie started, and it was absolutely immersive. In the opening car theft sequence, featuring a cameo by West himself, the shots of Lamborghinis speeding through Doha look like scenes from Akira. Hyper stylized and slick, they pull off the impressive feat of making the streets of a Gulf capital look sexy. Kid Cudi is the thief-in-chief who falls for a blind Arabian princess. The dream-like story unfolds on seven screens that alternatively switch on and off, occasionally showing different angles of one shot and at other times act like an IMAX experience. You find yourself looking around at the different screens, which include one on the ceiling and one on the floor, so you don’t miss anything. West explained in a speech at the end of the 30-minute short that the intent was to reproduce the way we live our lives today, constantly hopping from one screen to the next, trying to absorb the world around us and turn it into a coherent whole.

The film has a very slick, music-video feel to it, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, because that also says something about where our cultural consumption is today. The underlying narrative of the piece is strong enough for it to be more than just an exercise in style.
The Gulf has never looked so cool, and what could have been a very cheesy depiction of sand dunes and falcons mid-flight, actually proved visually-compelling and interesting. In a sense it reminded me of M.I.A.’s Bad Girls video, a kind of parallel and hyper-stylized Arab world.

Even if Kid Cudi plays the main character, Arabs have pivotal roles in the film. The blind princess played by a young Qatari actress, and Lebanon’s very own Razane Jammal who gets prime screen time as an Arabian queen in the dreamlike flashback sequences.

Eventually, there was an urge to create a new kind of cinema that would be committed and intellectual, almost worthy of the French New Wave. And so the era of commercial movies came to an end and was replaced by a revolutionary new aesthetic that favoured a gritty depiction of the daily, social and political realities. Short films made a resurgence, since they’re always an inevitable on the way to making a first feature film. The number of documentaries also increased considerably in the Arab world. The Palestinian cause became a recurrent theme in the history of Arab imagery. Raffic Hajjar produced several documentaries about Palestine like Les Fusils Unis, 1973 (Guns Are United); May and the Palestinians, 1974 and Al Intifada, 1975. Samir Nasri also added his contribution to the theme with Le Sud entre les Griffes de l’Ennemi (The South in the Claws of the Enemy) in 1970.

New directors started out, like Georges Chamchoum, Samir Khoury, Samir El Ghoussayni, Romeo Lahoud, Mounir Maasri, and others who had made a name for themselves in the sixties like Christian Ghazi, reappeared. A few Egyptian producers resurfaced to shoot films in Lebanon, one of whom was Henri Barakat, who made La Visiteuse (The Visitor), Ma Chérie (My Darling), 1973 and Les plus beaux jours de ma vie (The Best Days of My Life), 1973). Georges Chamchoum directed only one feature film, Salam Baad Al Mawt (Peace after Death), in 1971. The movie was presented at the Moscow Festival but was not well received and Chamchoum was unable to find distributors. He later switched to producing documentaries. Samir Khoury produced Saydat El Kamar Es Sawda (Lady of the Black Moons) with an Egyptian cast. The film was widely acclaimed in Lebanon and Tunisia, which led him to shoot Ziab La Ta’kol El Lahm (Wolves Don’t Eat Meat) one year later in Kuwait. The erotic movie was a flop. In 1972 Samir El Ghoussayni, then a script boy and first assistant, shot an Egyptian style film, Kotat Charé El Hamra (The Cats of Hamra Street)…

Christian Ghazzi | Christian Ghazzi and friends, Making of 100 faces in a single day, 1972 | “Guitar el Hob” by Mohammed Selman (1973)

Stills from the movie Lebanon through cinema, by Hady Zaccak, a short story about Lebanon and its cinema through 50 feature films from the 50′s till 2001.

Film making and producing were then neglected and replaced by an interest in news and contemporary events.
Meanwhile, Egypt had its eye on Lebanon, mainly because of its freedom of speech. In 1927, Bahr Bi Yidhak leih (Why Does the Sea Laugh?) by Amine Atallah was one of the first silent Egyptian movies to be shown in Lebanon.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that Lebanese cinema gained some importance, through the arrival of Georges Kahi who directed Azab El Damir (Remorse), Kalbane wa Jassad (Two Hearts and One Body), Al Sam Al Abiad (White Poison), Arabat Al Chaitane (The Devil’s Cart), and Anta Omri (You Are My Life) in the fifties and sixties. There was also Michel Haroun who filmed his only movie Zouhour Hamra (Red Flowers) in 1957 and Mohammed Selmane, a popular singer, who directed a number of different kinds of movies (Al Lahn Al Awal (The First Melody), 1957; Marhabane Ayouhal Hob (Hello Love), 1962; Mawal (The Folk Song), 1966). And of course, there was Georges Nasser who presented the first Lebanese movie at the Cannes Festival in 1957, Ila Ayn as well as a second, french-language, film three years later, Le Petit Etranger (The Little Stranger). However, Nasser was slated by French critics who accused him of trying to imitate the New Wave. To add insult to injury, upon his return to Lebanon, he was unable to find theaters willing to screen his movie as the public preferred Egyptian and other foreign films. In 1974, Georges Nasser produced his last cinematographic work; a long socio-political film, Al Matloub Rajol Wahed (One Man Wanted) in Syria.

Once again condemned, Lebanese cinema was eclipsed during the sixties by its giant Egyptian counterpart. However, things would change as Egypt was drained of its movie directors and its intellectuals during President Abdel Nasser’s regime, which prohibited all forms of freedom on its soil and nationalized the film industry in 1963. At that point, Lebanon became a film set for Egyptian cinema. Egyptian filmmaking in Lebanon reached its peak during that period, taking full advantage of the beauty of Lebanese landscapes and covering all the film industry in Lebanon. It was highly successful and studios started popping up all over the country. Production continued to increase, allowing Lebanon to become the second largest film production zone after the United Arab Republic. Beirut became the new capital of film distribution, with 7 big American companies and 41 independent offices, and experienced what is widely regarded as the Golden Age of Lebanese Cinema.

Mohammed Selmane took advantage of this Golden Age to take his place in the history of the Lebanese cinema, along with Joseph Ghorayeb (Hokm El Kadar (Judgement of Fate), 1959). At that time, famous filmmakers also shot films in Lebanon. Jean Becker filmed Echappement Libre (Cutout) in 1964 and Georges Lautner made La Grande Sauterelle (The Big Grasshopper) in 1967, amongst others.
However, there unfortunate byproduct of all these successful Egyptian and Western productions in Lebanon, was that they didn’t allow Lebanese cinema –which was still searching for its identity– to develop. During the sixties, there was cinema in Lebanon but it couldn’t be referred to as Lebanese cinema. Indeed, despite the increase in production and co-production (Egypt and Syria), and some valiant attempts (Antoine Rémy, Chouchou wal Million (Chouchou and the Million) 1963, Lil Nisa Fakat (For Women Only) 1966, Beirut 011, 1967), Lebanese cinema was still ailing as a result of a deep lack of identity or personality, too many Egyptian movies, an misunderstanding of the filmmaking industry, a lack of technique and professionalism and above all, an audience that showed little interest contributed to this deficiency.

Right after 1967, a wave of films on the Palestinian resistance arrived on the scene. Christian Ghazi, who only managed to get one of his many films past the censors during the war, produced the first film about the Palestinian resistance, Al Fadaiyyoun (The Fedayins) and Gary Garabedian filmed Koullouna Fadaiyyoun (We are all Fedayins). Only the movies of the Rahbani brothers, which were adapted for the silver screen by the Egyptians Youssef Chahine for Biya Al Khawatem (The Ring Seller) and Henri Barakat for Safar Barlak and Bint El Hares (The Watchman’s Daughter), featuring the legendary Fairuz, served to restore the reputation of Lebanese cinema.