We Are Inside

After a 15-year absence, Farah returns to Lebanon to spend time with her ageing father. In their Tripoli apartment, which has been in mourning for several years following the death of her mother, Mustapha and Farah attempt to find a common language. The five decades which separate them, as well as their differing points of view, give rise to discussions tinged with humour, but also a lack of understanding. But she knows that a refuge does exist, into which she will attempt to insinuate herself: poetry. By joining Mustapha's circle of poets, a club composed solely of men with a passion for literature, Farah gradually begins to understand their language, thus earning a chance of reaching her father. While the 2019 revolution rumbles on in the streets, Farah Kassem introduces us into this apartment, where words and images seek each other out between two doors, giving rise to a final, essential conversation. The director (You Make a Better Window Than You Do a Door, VdR 2017) returns to a Lebanon in crisis to make her first, deeply moving full-length feature film, in which Arabic poetry combines with the impermanence of life and precious, sometimes clumsy, exchanges of words between father and daughter – which will belong to them forever.

Aurélien Marsais

We Are Inside, 2024
You Make a Better Window Than You Do a Door, 2017
Nettoyer Schaerbeek, 2017
My Father Looks Like Abdel Nasser, 2012