The Green Line (1998)
Bahij Hojeij’s documentary studies the infamous Green Line between east and west Beirut during the civil war.
Bahij Hojeij’s documentary studies the infamous Green Line between east and west Beirut during the civil war.

The apocalyptic blast in the Port of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 4, 2020, exacerbates anger at those in power: protests cross religious boundaries as the Lebanese people curse corruption, nepotism, gross economic mismanagement and squandering of resources. How did the Land of Cedars, a country with so much to offer, allow itself to get into such a dire situation? And will it be able to bounce back?

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 siege? Each place will then become a story and each name a memory.

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

WINE and WAR is a documentary about one of the the oldest winemaking regions on earth and the resilience of the Lebanese entrepreneurial spirit seen through the lens of war and instability.
The meaty saga of Burger Baron, a rogue fast-food chain with mysterious origins and a cult following, run by a loose network of fiercely independent Arab Canadian immigrants.
A group of young UN soldiers in Lebanon enters service with pro-Israeli views and a naive outlook on war. They go through a radical change of heart as they witness and film the Qana massacre. They secure video evidence indicating that Israel deliberately bombed a UN camp killing 106 refugees.
‘Objects of War’ is a series of testimonials on the Lebanese war. Each person chooses an object, ordinary or unusual, which serves as a starting point for his / her story. These testimonials while helping to create a collective memory, also show the impossibility of telling a single History of this war. Only fragments of this History are recounted here, held as truth by those expressing them. In ‘Objects of War’, the aim is not to reveal a truth but rather to gather and confront many diverse versions and discourses on the subject. ‘Objects of War’ started in 1999 assembling the testimonials of eleven persons. It was first shown in 2000 . It continued in 2003 with ‘Objects of War n°2’, recording seven additional testimonials. This time however, and since then, the recorded material is left unedited, shown in its integrity. The work of collecting and assembling these stories continued with ‘Objects of War n°3 & n°4’ in 2006 and ‘n°5 & 6’ in 2014.

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon, in Italy, in Germany and in Switzerland.
Filmed in Beirut in the Spring of 1984, in many ways a letter about warfront.

In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.
Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.

A cell phone was the only thing that kept Yonas, an Eritrean refugee, connected to Jérôme, the French journalist who wanted to tell his story. They met in Libya in 2019, in the abyss of a detention center. Yonas managed to escape and attempted several times to cross the Mediterranean. Like many others who jump from one hell to another, Yonas's only option was to flee forward, and what lay before him was a small boat. Yonas's News chronicles the epic journey in which his life was at stake, summarized in the WhatsApp and voice messages, photos, and videos he was able to exchange with Jérôme. Jérôme Tubiana, journalist, researcher, and member of Doctors Without Borders, has visited Libya five times between 2018 and 2020.

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. This film traces the origins of the Lebanese conflict, the perception of a society that goes to war while singing. A unique document on the Lebanese civil war. Beyond the religious war, the painting of a social and political reality that has not changed much, more than four decades later.

Yallah! Underground follows some of today’s most influential and progressive artists in Arab underground culture from 2009 to 2013 and documents their work, dreams and fears in a time of great change for Arab societies. In a region full of tension, young Arab artists in the Middle East have struggled for years to express themselves freely and to promote more liberal attitudes within their societies. During the Arab Spring, like many others of this new generation, local artists had high hopes for the future and took part in the protests. However, after years of turmoil and instability, young Arabs now have to challenge both old and new problems, being torn between feelings of disillusion and a vague hope for a better future.

Uninhibited examination of the legacy of Lebanon’s civil war. A reflection on the destinies of comrades who were once bound by ideologies and remain tightly knit friends. The film travels the chimeric and daunting reality of Lebanon's fractured post-war landscape.
In this video, the artist tries to overcome the effects of distance, and reflects on geography represented in exile due to war, and on the psychological distance represented in each one’s approach to her womanhood. The video beautifully weaves personal images and audio recordings of a very intimate nature, binding the personal with the political. Reading aloud from letters sent by her mother in Beirut, Hatoum creates a visual montage reflecting her feelings of separation and isolation from her Palestinian family. The personal and political are inextricably bound in a narrative that explores personal and family identity against a backdrop of traumatic social rupture, exile and displacement.
Severely battered from the Beirut Port Explosion on August 4th, Minerva passed away eight days later. Her son Joseph, while still grieving for his loss, sunk into a long and absurd bureaucratic path through the inept system that disowned his mother as a victim of the blast. Minerva is gone. The explosion has snatched her soul, and the city walls have not yet recognized her as a martyr. There is no poster of her smiling face among those of the victims. Their faces are memories that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps her son, devastated by her passing, seeks to etch her image into the city's memory. Perhaps he is seeking some confession to the crime. This is a place that casts out its children, whether dead or alive.
Architecture in Beirut was the second greatest victim of the civil war, with pages of ancient and modern history erased by the end of the conflict. This documentary interviews citizens calling for a reconstruction plan that would preserve Beirut’s spirit of culture and openness.

Inhabitants of Beirut talk about their love for the singer Fairuz.

Tribute to the Druze Kamal Jumblatt, Minister of Economy and Agriculture (1946) and founder of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) in 1949. He was one of the architects of the departure of President Bechara el-Khoury (1952), before playing a major role in the events of 1958. From 1960 to 1964, Kamal Jumblatt assumed, under the presidency of Fouad Chehab, various ministerial functions . . After the conflict of June 1967, he gradually approached the Palestinian organizations. In 1969 he became Minister of the Interior; in August 1970, he supported the election of Soleiman Frangié as President of the Republic. Following the Lebanese-Palestinian clashes of May 1973, he took sides against the head of state, established himself as the leader of the National Movement in 1975 and engaged in a revolutionary armed struggle against the Lebanese Front. Hostile to Syria's intervention in Lebanon, he broke with it (March 1976). He was assassinated near a Syrian checkpoint in 1977.