Civilisées

Lebanese director Randa Chahal Sabbag spins this bleak war drama about the brutal absurdity of the urban warfare of Beirut during the 1980s. Opening with the shocking image of kittens being blown apart, the film loosely follows the travails of Bernadette (Nada Ghosn), a naïve country girl sent to the city as a maid for a mansion long since abandoned by the owners. There she meets Therese (Renee Dick), a veteran house cleaner who takes her under her wing. One day, while accompanying her friend to the cemetery, she meets a rakish Arab militiam...

Our Heedless Wars

September 1994, Beirut : the systematic reconstruction of the city is beginning. The civil war, which began in 1975, has been over for two years. Randa Chahal Sabbag, a Lebanese film-maker whose family was politically and military involved in the conflict, gives a very personal view of these seventeen years of war. She uses archives, family videos and 16 mm films made between 1975 and 1994. The film features interviews with her mother in Tripoli, her sister in Paris and her brother in Beirut. She pays tribute to the memory of her father, who...