Beirut Hotel (review) - بيروت بالليل

Trailer for "Beirut Hotel"

Lebanese audience watched this feature in defiance to the infamous ban that is imposed, and proved that such censorship is rather meaningless in a connected world. Arte channel, a main contributor to the movie, screened Beirut Hotel earlier in January. The movie was scheduled to be released in Lebanese theaters prior to the TV release, but the ban prevented this from happening. The movie is carefully made, and it was selected for many festivals, there is no clear reason why it wasn't selected for Cannes this year although it was supported by "The Atelier". The actress Hamze was playing one of her best roles in her career, thanks to Arbid's direction. Nevertheless, few problems arose related to the erotic scenes in the original trailer. Overall, Arbid is proving once more her great talent by a successful third movie attracting audience (Western and Arabs). The plot revolves around a love affair intersecting with a spy story. As in her previous movie, the main cast is divided between a French actor, and an Arab one. They met by chance, and the French begin stalking the Arab until they bond together. The cinematography is rather eye-candy, revealing an appealing Beirut in a colorful picture. The unfortunate ban have contributed to raising awareness among the population and promoting the movie (approximately 1.5 million watched the TV release including 700,000 in France alone + 34,000 on the web). The last chance to watch Beirut Hotel on arte is scheduled on February 4th 01:40 GMT+1.

Censorship craze

Artistic creations in Lebanon is facing a new challenge with the recent announcement about canceling the long-awaited screening of Beirut Hotel in Lebanon theaters by the censorship committee. As suggested, the film was banned due to political reason, not for the intimate scenes inside, it was considered as it would "endanger Lebanon's security"! We hope that this decision will be reverted quickly and witness the release of the film soon in Lebanon.

We take this occasion to hope best luck for the director Danielle Arbid during the screening of this movie in Dubai during the DIFF. Apparently the margin of freedom is getting wider in Dubai, in contrast to Beirut.

Note: Thanks for the Independist for pointing out to this sad story.

Beirut Hotel - بيروت بالليل

Trailer for Beirut Hotel

The year 2010 was a busy year in Lebanese movies production. After the successful release of Stray Bullet, two more movies produced in 2010 are very promising, Where do we go now? made it to the Cannes selection, but another movie that was also rumored to make it to the official selection was that of the prominent director Danielle Arbid. The movie is called Beirut Hotel, and the trailer gets us impatient until the release of the full feature. Beirut Hotel is the third long feature by this distinguished director. We can feel from the few scenes in the trailer the presence of the flesh and violence in an artistic way as an essential ingredients as we've seen before in previous movies of Arbid. I hope to watch it very soon in Lebanese theaters.

Update: On the eve of the DIFF opening, Lebanese censorship committee decided to cancel the screening of the movie in Lebanon theaters that were scheduled to debut in January.

Update 2: Below a new released Music Clip for the original song Sa'at Sa'at  directed by Daniele Arbid, composed by Zeid Hamdan and performed by Darine Hamze.