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.

Territory of Rose - خلة وردة

Trailer for Territor of Rose

After directing many music videos and advertisement, Adel Serhan had a first experience in feature movie Territory of Rose. The movie tells a story of a village during the occupation of South Lebanon and the atrocities committed by Lahd conspirators army. Despite the harsh reality, the film managed to gather a light touch of humor and a challenging entertaining plot. Nevertheless, the low production budget imposed itself by a humble quality of many technical aspects (photography, makeup, etc). For some reason, the projection in theaters had a DVD resolution, which devalues the picture quality enormously. Nevertheless, it's an entertaining movie, and will satisfy a big share of the audience expectations.

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.

Ok, Enough, Goodbye - طيّب، خلص، يلّا

Scenes from "Ok, Enough, Goodbye"

The main theme of this movie is the city of Tripoli. Painted in beautiful colors and the enjoyable dialect of the second Lebanese city, this feature manages to attract the audiences by a light comedy, yet charged with analysis of the society in the general Lebanese life.  Among the thoughts that emerge upon watching it is the reliance of the Lebanese male on women. When the mother of the main character leaves home (for a reason that would've been better accepted if explained more in the script), he exhaust every available means to compensate her absence. I will avoid any spoilers, it's an amusing first film made by young directors a Lebanese Tripolitan Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia, a foreigner. As described by the film makers, the production was mainly a "two person" work, with most cast selected among Rania's own family, reducing the budget to a micro one. Nevertheless, the movie is fun and highly recommended... Hoping to be screened in Tripoli soon!

One of the used posters

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.