Cinema
Beirut the Encounter
بيروت اللقاء
Borhane Alaouié · 1981
Synopsis
Beirut, 1977. The telephone lines have just been restored between the east and the west of the city. Zeina, a former student from a Christian family, and Haydar, a Shiite schoolteacher who has fled his village in the South, met at university and are back in touch by telephone. Zeina leaves the next day for the United States. For twenty-four hours, they try to see each other, held up by checkpoints and traffic jams, then each records a cassette that they agree to exchange at the airport.
Context
Ahmad Beydoun wrote the screenplay and the monologues; Charles Van Damme and Alexis Grivas handle the camera, and the film brings together producers from Lebanon, Tunisia and Belgium. The records do not agree on the running time, one hundred and one minutes for the Berlinale, two hours five for others. The Royal Belgian Film Archive restored a digital copy, shown in its world premiere at the Berlin Forum in 2022.
Who it is for
In Arabic, subtitled. The two characters talk to each other more than they see each other; long recorded monologues make up the film.
Prizes and reception
Presented at the Venice Film Festival in 1981, then in competition at Berlin in 1982; restored and screened again forty years later.
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