Diaries From Lebanon

Myriam El Hajj
Lebanon, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia | 2024 | 110 min
Swiss Premiere
Language : Arabic
Subtitles : English, French

Myriam El Hajj (A Time to Rest, VdR 2015) recounts the recent history of her country, Lebanon, marked by a succession of shocks and deep-rooted crises. The repressed revolutions of October 2019, the repercussions of the port explosion of August 2020... Through George, Joumana and Perla Joe, who recount the issues at stake for three different generations, we bear witness to the anger and hope of a people.

Myriam El Hajj charts the history of Lebanon, her country, over the last four years. It is a short chronology, yet so intense that it is tempting to describe it as an epic. Several focus points are joined together to evoke the successive economic and political crises: the huge crowds on the streets during the 2019 revolution are juxtaposed with intimate close-ups of individuals. Three faces from different generations embody the anger, determination and hopes of the Lebanese people. Through the character of Georges, we see the scars left by the civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. Joumana Haddad, a feminist journalist and writer, lights up the public stage with her sunny presence by standing in the 2018 parliamentary elections. Perla Joe sings for the local youth from the rooftops of Beirut. Narrated by the director, whose voice runs through the film like a poignant breath of air, these bold accounts, imbued with lucid emotions, shed light on a collective sleeplessness and pay tribute to personal trajectories in which dreams compete with fatigue.
Cloé Tralci

Diaries From Lebanon, 2024
A Time to Rest, 2015
Off War Beirut, 2009