Movies: Jocelyne Saab

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

The Architect of Louxor is an intimate portrait of Olivier Sednaoui, a disciple of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathi, as he explains the philosophy behind his decision to build a house using traditional techniques and local resources, linking the a...

Portrait of a French mercenary working in Libya, hired by the Phalange to train the militias. War leaves its traces; and for some, who see death as part of the job, it’s a vocation....

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...

Palestinian women, the often-forgotten victims of the Israeli-Palestinian war, are here given a voice by Jocelyne Saab. The film was commissioned by Antenne 2 (France), but it was censured while still in the editing stage and never shown. This print...

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,...

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 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...

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. ...

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....

Humiliated by the 1967 defeat, the Egyptian people look for ways to rebuild their sense of identity. Religion seems to point the way for them: Jocelyne Saab portrays the success of the Muslim Brotherhood and the increasingly rigid cultural values tak...