Jocelyne Saab Shorts · A Personal Look at Lebanon: War, Memory and Resistance

This programme reveals the most intimate and personal side of Jocelyne Saab's cinema. Through more poetic pieces about a childhood marked by war, the return to a devastated city and the life of her people under siege, the filmmaker builds a gaze that intertwines individual experience with collective memory. Lebanon is not only the setting of the conflict but also an affective territory, crossed by loss, displacement and the will to find some hope among the rubble.

LOS NIÑOS DE LA GUERRA
France, 1976, 12'
Direction: Jocelyne Saab

To what extent does war vampirise children's imaginations and shape their perception of reality? Jocelyne Saab meets young survivors of the Karantina massacre, a shantytown bombed by the Lebanese Phalanges.

BEIRUT, MI CIUDAD
France, 1982, 38'
Direction: Jocelyne Saab

Beirut, My City follows Jocelyne Saab and her collaborator, playwright and director Roger Assaf, as they return to the remains of their former home after the 1982 Israeli invasion. Amid the chaos of refugee camps and the rubble of devastated neighbourhoods, they find small glimmers of hope.

SUR DEL LÍBANO, HISTORIA DE UN PUEBLO ASEDIADO
France, 1976, 12'
Direction: Jocelyne Saab

The ceasefire of 21 October 1976 allows the fedayeen to return to this area of southern Lebanon, known as “Fatahland”, to reclaim a region abandoned in 1970 and wrest it from right-wing militias. However, Syria and Israel join forces to neutralise the “autonomous force” represented by the Palestinians, blockading the two Lebanese border villages of Hanine and Kfarchouba before attacking them.