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.

The Mountain - الجبل

Trailer of "The Mountain"

The latest movie by Ghassan Salhab, The Mountain, follows the style of The Last Man with the minimum use of conversations and reduce the cast to almost one actor with all the difficulties that ensue when producing under such decision. The movie tells the story of a man who decides to isolate himself to concentrate on wirting in some hotel room in a remote mountain region. The isolation is nearly complete with TV, phones and other means of communication cut-off, but also the window closed down, hence loosing the sense of day and night. Fadi Abi Samra who plays the leading role impersonates the isolated man situation in a very convincing way. Ghassan Salhab manages another time to escape from the cliché themes originating from movies in our region to draw fictional scenes that can be set anywhere (despite some elements that would relate to Lebanon such as radio news stories). Some ideas in the movie can be seen echoed in other features like A Lost Man which tells the story of a man who decided to run away from his country, or The One Man Village a documentary where a single man lives alone isolated  in a far away village. Salhab was able to shed the light on this issue in a new angle, tickling the memory of the viewer of similar moments of loneliness, and the corresponding audio and visual sensations that follows. This film is not a general public movie, nonetheless, it will provide a new interesting experience to the viewer.