Making a film in Beirut is first of all an attempt to claim your existence. Without French and Quebec coproducers, a film like ours could never have been made. Lebanese production is minimal and risky, individual initiative sporadic right at a time when we've never had more need to see our images, to rediscover the way back to ourselves. Post-war Lebanon suffers from an absence of time, a crushing supremacy of space. Reconstruction's clean sweep acts like a machine wiping out memories. It's reached the point where we wonder if this is truly necessary. The "present" has been lost between the obsessive search for the "future" and nostalgia for the pre-crime "past." With this film we want to record an action in the present, seize the possibility of living right now.

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige – Directors