Movies: Jocelyne Saab

After studying literature at Cairo University, Dunia, 23 years old, wants to become a professional dancer. She attends audition for an oriental dance contest where she recites Arabian poetry without any body movement. She explain to the perplexed jur...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

When peace seems impossible, any means are justified to defend a political cause. Hence, on the border separating the Palestinian territories that refuse to recognize the State of Israel, the idea of suicide commandos emerges. Jocelyne Saab films tee...

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. ...

The cease-fire declared on October 21, 1976, gave the Fedayeen the opportunity to reclaim this area—Fatah territory until it was abandoned in 1970—from the right wing militia. But Syrians and Israelis joined together to neutralise this Palestinian “a...

Six 4-minute short films each filmed in the countries of the Mediterranean, and dealing with expressions of gender, the body, sexuality and identity. Six interviews with artists or people talking about these thorny issues makes for a geographical imp...

This film from the heart of the desert shows the conflict between the Algerians and the Moroccans at El Aioun, and the Saharan resistance of the Polisario Front. A never ending story which is still one of the reasons for the conflict between Algeria ...

Portrait of a woman, Jocelyne Khoueiry, who, in 1976 during the Lebanese civil war, was the muse of the Phalangist militia in Beirut. Fifteen years later, stricken with remorse, she became a nun and founded a religious order....

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....