Renée Dick

A young woman searches through war-torn and rebuilding Beirut for a man who took pictures of her home. A home she has only ever known in ruins.

Lina, a young girl in war-torn Beirut, finds an ally and friend in Sihan, her domineering aunt's maid. Sihan shows Lina what her life could be like, but tests the girl's limits when she asks her to help plot her escape from the city.

Zeina is a Catholic student whose good friend Haidar, a Muslim, has always been particularly close. After a futile attempt to get together (he gets caught in traffic), they each decide to make an audio tape trying to explain, based on their own ideas, why there continues to be fighting in Lebanon now, in 1977, and why they are against it. Zeina is about to leave for the United States and Haidar is to meet her at the airport, where they will exchange their tapes. Alas, fate intervenes because when he arrives early at the airport, he is harassed by someone looking to prey on gullible refugees and he gets so angry that he grabs a taxi out of there, throwing his tape away as he does so. When Zeina arrives and realizes he is not there, she is broken-hearted.

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 militiaman, and the two fall in love.

A young 15 year old girl, Lamia, lives in a southern Lebanese village on the border with Israel. She is given in marriage to her cousin on the other side of the border. As Lamia crosses the barbed wire she also passes from childhood into adulthood, as brutal as our countries and the events that are to follow.