Once Upon a Time in Beirut

Director: Jocelyne Saab

1994 / 104min / 35mm

Two young women, Yasmine and Leïla (Michèle Tyan and Myrna Maakaron), one Muslim, one Christian, set off on a search for the memory of their brutalized and amnesiac city, Beirut, and so doing discover a vital resource in the person of Mr. Farouk, an aged cinema owner whose collection of old, discarded film prints, a treasure trove of living Lebanese history, he provides them access to. A singular docufiction, Saab’s stirring homage to her homeland, its rich cinematic past, and the transportive power of the moving image was born of the cineaste’s impassioned efforts to rebuild the Lebanese national film archive from out of the rubble of Civil War.

Distributor: Jocelyne Saab Association

Part of Jocelyne Saab: Letters from Lebanon