Movies: Jocelyne Saab

Focusing on key Arab films produced in the last 20 years. Férid Boughedir traces the development of the film-makers' concern to produce more socially aware cinema. Themes include the issue of Palestinian homeland rights and the nature of Arab identit...

A young, free-spirited dancer and student of Arabic poetry falls in love with her thesis supervisor while trapped in a relationship with a man who disapproves of her dancing....

Based on interviews with 15 women, including directors, producers and film actresses, a journey around the world is made, seeing the wars waged by each one against economic and political repression, bombs, police dogs, censors, etc. Images from Engla...

Samar, a child of the war, finds relief from the chaos around her through Egyptian movies she watches on television. Karim, an artist in retreat from life, remains in his apartment in war-torn West Beirut, confident that he is safe in his familiar ne...

At bottom is a tale of exploring the imagination of a writer, plus a tale of exploring the city of Beirut. The film deals with the initiation to love and the female soul....

Two young girls of the war generation, Yasmin and Leila, are in search of Beirut. When they meet an elderly film enthusiast with a secret store of Lebanese films, they persuade him to screen his collection for them. So begins an initiation into the m...

After living clandestinely in Beirut to escape the Israeli forces, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, left Lebanon aboard the Atlantis for a new exile in Greece and then Tunis. He talks about his destiny and the f...

A delicate portrait of Mei Shigenobu, daughter of the founder of the Japanese Red Army in Beirut, Fusako Shigenobu....

A few months after the incident of April 13, 1975, during which Palestinian civilians were machine-gunned by Phalangist militiamen, the toll is most tragic: six thousand dead, twenty thousand wounded, incessant kidnappings, a semi-destroyed capital. ...

In July 1982, the Israeli army besieged Beirut. Four days earlier, Jocelyne Saab sees her house burn and 150 years of family existence go up in smoke. She then takes refuge in questioning: when did this all begin? How did the Beirut people live the s...

An imaginary post card written to the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. Jocelyne Saab writes about her illness, about the fragility of her body, and the situation in the Middle East that is ravaged by war....

The Architect of Louxor is an intimate portrait of Olivier Sednaoui, a disciple of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathi, as he explains the philosophy behind his decision to build a house using traditional techniques and local resources, linking the a...

Letter from Beirut documents the filmmaker's return to Beirut during one of the lulls, three years after the outbreak of the civil war, animated by the urge to return. She is confronted by the physical, emotional and psychological ravages of the war,...

A few days after a massacre in a shantytown near Beirut, the director finds the children who survived. She approaches them by offering them crayons to draw. A link is created between them. They let her film their violent games: they repeat the scenes...

1976 marks the beginning of Beirut’s calvary. With a child’s eyes the filmmaker follows for six months the daily destruction of the city’s walls. Every morning, between 6 and 10am she roams around Beirut while the militia from both sides rest from th...

A portrait of the City of the Dead, an inhabited cemetery just outside of Cairo and on the fringes of the city’s public dumping ground, like a living reproach and a bad conscience. Starting from the City of the Dead, the film shows the populous neigh...

Portrait of a French mercenary working in Libya, hired by the Phalange to train the militias. War leaves its traces; and for some, who see death as part of the job, it’s a vocation....

Poetry is everywhere, even in the refugee camps where absolute misery reigns. In front of old plastic advertising posters on which are drawn in giant format the big icons of luxury and consumerism that make up their shelters, refugee children stand l...

A singular and poetic evocation of what Alexandria was, a multifaceted city, when it was at the heart of the Arab and European worlds. The men of letters Cavafy and Lawrence Durell are evoked by a few quotes describing the city, scattered throughout ...

Humiliated by the 1967 defeat, the Egyptian people look for ways to rebuild their sense of identity. Religion seems to point the way for them: Jocelyne Saab portrays the success of the Muslim Brotherhood and the increasingly rigid cultural values tak...