Cinema
Beirut Oh Beirut
بيروت يا بيروت
Maroun Bagdadi · 1975
Synopsis
Four young Lebanese try to rebuild their lives in Beirut in the wake of the Arab defeat of 1967. The film mixes an impossible love story with the trajectories of a Muslim lawyer, a young Christian woman and a worker from the South, and follows, from the first Israeli offensive of 1968 to the death of Nasser in 1970, the beginnings of the armed resistance in the south of the country.
Context
Written with Oussama El-Aref, the film opens the series of its director's feature films. Shooting took place in the streets of Beirut, at the Lebanese University and in the Gemmayzé school where the filmmaker had grown up. Completed and screened on the eve of the civil war, the film was long regarded as a premonition of the Lebanese tragedy. It runs one hundred and eleven minutes; a restored archive print was shown for its fiftieth anniversary.
Who it is for
In Arabic, subtitled; the images of Beirut before the destruction are as much of interest as the story.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a milestone of Lebanese cinema, and hailed as such on its fiftieth anniversary.
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