In the countryside, a family sees its life upset by the installation of a discharge. A film by Lebanese director Mounia Akl which testifies to the chaos of a country.
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In Lebanon, for a few years now, the Badri family has fled Beirut to settle in the great outdoors, in a little corner of paradise which they have made. Eloigated by the city whose lights notice from the hill, cut off from the country’s economic and environmental bankruptcy, Walid (Saleh Bakri), Suraya (Nadine Labaki) and their two daughters now live in total autarky, without any need than this which contributes to their peace of mind. Which is swept away, in one morning, by the sound of dump trucks and shovelers. On the field next to it, the trees are uprooted, a gigantic statue erected and tons of dumped waste. In just a few hours, on government order, an open-air discharge has been installed which disfigures and empuanties the whole site.
Six years after her short film Submarine, Lebanese director Mounia Akl (now installed in New York) therefore returns to the subject – very real – of the waste crisis which, for years, has shaken and pollutes Lebanon, testifies to the corruption of the state and raises the anger of the populations. In 2016, the catastrophe inspired the filmmaker an anticipation story. She takes it back today to combine it in the present, through a family whose daily life, conscience and projects will be questioned by the emergence of a reality from which Walid and Soraya believed that she had emancipated.
notion of engagement
Symbol of a Lebanon on the verge of chaos (financial collapse, economic and health disaster linked to the COVVI-19, murderous explosion on the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020), the Eden garden of the Badri family is seen Brutally transformed into hell. The disaster shakes up certainties, revives injuries and frustrations, obliges everyone to reconsider their choices and aspirations. The unsaid resurfaced, also carrying its dose of poison.
Because this disaster, Walid and Soraya – both activists, fell in love on the militant field – first fought him side by side, before Walid decides to abandon the battle and leave the capital, Soraya Stoping her singer career to follow him, with their daughter Tala (Nadia Charbel), then 7 years old. In their new cocoon was then born the youngest RIM (Ceana and Geana Restom), 9 years now, wild and also misanthropic as her father.
The balance had thus held. The arrival of the discharge and its workers reveals its weaknesses. Mounia Akl is the subject of her film, questioning through this, and with nuance, the notion of engagement. Fold on yourself or fight with others? In the beautiful light of a summer which seems not to have to end, Costa Brava, Lebanon makes the storm rumble and awakens the spirits to the tumult of the world, sowing in passing, on the heap of detritus, some notes of hope. Such as the first desires of a teenager with regard to a young engineer.
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