This year's LEFFEST presents a special focus on Lebanon, with two sessions dedicated to Lebanese history and culture.
On 12 November, at the Teatro do Bairro, at 10pm, there will be a very special concert by incredible producer and composer Charif Megarbane, accompanied by the Papié Maché group, and the film Whispers, by Maroun Bagdadi, will be screened. This screening promises a profound and poetic journey in which Bagdadi's film, starring the poet Nadia Tueni, reveals the desolation and nostalgia of a devastated country. The poet's every stop in Lebanon is marked by her search for lost hope and her idealised vision of her homeland, merging with that of the director himself.
The following day, 13 November, Cinema São Jorge hosts the screening of Phantom Beirut, by Ghassan Salhab, in Room 2, at 5pm. This drama, which moves between fiction and documentary, follows Khalil, a man who returns to Beirut ten years after faking his own death at the height of the Civil War. On his return, Khalil confronts his past, in a reunion between traumatic memories and reflections on the destruction of the country and the lasting impact of the war. Salhab's work, marked by his interest in exploring Beirut's identity and the wounds of war, is a milestone in Lebanese cinema and reflects the restlessness of a city torn between past and present.
These screenings at LEFFEST reveal the power of art in preserving memory and creating a collective narrative, inviting the public to immerse themselves in the complexity of Lebanese history through the arts.