Fadi Abi Samra

Beirut Hold’em depicts the life of Ziko, a 40-year old ex-con and petty gambler, and his three boyhood friends, in a seedy, lower-middle class district of Beirut. They’re fighting their way into a country on the edge of war and bankruptcy, where instability makes everyday life feel like Russian roulette, and sheer existence is yet another form of gambling.

The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the OPEC headquarters in 1975 before being caught by the French police.

After surviving a car crash in the middle of Lebanon's isolated Beqaa Valley, an amnesiac man finds himself held hostage on a local farm that doubles as an illegal drug-production facility.

It's Independence Day in Lebanon: three women who've never met before are on the same bus heading to visit a prison situated in a remote area of the country. Traveling through an arid landscape littered with mines and decapitated dreams, the journey transforms into the women's quest for their own independence.

Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society and the refugees' often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, Gate of the Sun spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.

Still Burning tells the unexpected reunion in Paris in June 1998 of André, a Lebanese filmmaker living and working in France, and Walid, the very close friend he has not seen for years. In their youth, in Beirut, during the civil war, they were both possessed by the same artistic vocation: Cinema, but also by the same woman: Amira. Their reunion, all night long, will not fail to awaken their old repressed demons for better or for worse.

Farid, who works abroad, locks himself on the last day of his stay in Beirut in his son Rawad's room, to find what he is hiding there. Separated by a locked door, the dysfunctional dynamic between them intensifies, and the past resurfaces.

Sharaf may dream of being fabulously rich, but when he ends up in prison after killing a man in defense of his honor, he has to wake up fast. Prison mirrors the outside world, with all its systemic inequality, injustice and corruption––although, even here, Sharaf believes he can make his fortune.

One evening, a married young singer Zoha meets the French lawyer Mathieu in a night club in Beirut. Mathieu will become suspected of spying, while Zoha is trying to flee from her husband. Despite these problems, the two will witness a love story for few days mixed with violence and fear.

18-year-old Lina arrives in Paris for her studies. She comes to look for what she has never found in Lebanon, her country of origin: a certain form of freedom. The survival instinct as the only baggage, she sails from one Paris to another to the rhythm of her romantic encounters.

In 1975, the long slog of civil war has recently begun in Beirut. Two friends, Tarek and Omar, suffer during the Lebanese civil war. Conflicts arise when they decide to cross from West to East, crossing the Muslim-Christian line that divides Beirut.

Alex turns 60 in an old-fashioned seaside resort. She's waiting for her guests, but they will not come. Ali, the waiter, and Gina, a Russian dancer fleeing her pimp, will offer her a birthday out of the ordinary. Frank, the long-awaited friend, finally appears. Alex will be able to put his plan into action.

Everything bad that can happen on the way to a party happens to young Tou on this nighttime trip though Beirut.

In a war-torn Middle Eastern city where music has been banned by Islamic extremists, Karim, a brilliant musician, struggles to rebuild his destroyed piano while trying to escape to Europe.

Living in Beirut, a highly enthusiastic filmmaker is in a state of hyper inspiration characterized by an overfiow of contrasting ideas. As a consequence, his characters will go through compelling and extraordinary circumstances. To clear his mind, he heads north where a screening of his short films is scheduled in a rural public school. A series of encounters along the way will turn his world upside down.

A documentary that is half fiction that follows the secrets behind the suicide of Belgium Director Chantal Akerman and French post nouvelle vague filmmaker Jean Eustache, where they both ended their life on the 5th day but in a different month, and 34 years apart. The film records conversations and confessions with award-winning filmmakers and actors from Beirut, Brussels and Paris as well as a very interesting afternoon with Jean Eustache's Son Boris who tells us everything.

To find her stolen scooter, Arze drags her rebellious son on an adventurous journey across Beirut.

Inspired by the photographic travels of Antione d'Agata, Danielle Arbid's worldly drama follows a French photographer who travels the globe to seek out the most extreme experiences imaginable. Thomas is a fearless shutterbug who's always willing to put his life on the line for the sake of a good shot. Upon falling under the spell of an enigmatic old man named Fouad Saleh, the photographer travels to the Far East in hopes of uncovering the secrets of the man who can no longer recall his own past. As the photographer soon finds out, it's often the most innocent endeavors that yield the most profound and transformative results.

While one evening he is guarding his aunt's house in an isolated village in Lebanon, Anis will have to pretend to be a thief to save his life during a burglary.

Karim, in his forties, who has lived in France since his teenage years, returns to Lebanon to transfer the remains of his father, who died during the war, from Beirut to his native village.

Night falls over Beirut. Fadi, a forty year old, packs his luggage and sets out to the airport with his friend driving him. He is supposed to leave for a month, but instead of going up the plane, he heads to the arrivals section and rents a car. He takes the highway heading North then continues on a mountainous route. Far from anyone, on a deserted highway, a deviation forces him to quit the main road. A distinct sound coming from far is heard; the sound of a car honk. Fadi gets closer and closer to the sound and sees a wrecked car crashed in a tree alongside the road. A couple lay still inside.

A young woman makes her way back home to her parents’ house in the middle of the night leaving a bad experience behind. Haunting pressures to fit back into the family dynamics as well as revealing details of her life abroad weigh heavy on her. Feeling cornered, her anxieties resurface, leading her to find solace in another part of her Beirut life that she had forsaken. A life that is for her as familiar and foreign now as it ever was.

One of the most popular Lebanese films of the late 1990s, Around the Pink House is a story that explores the changing urban landscape of Beirut after the Civil War. La maison rose (the pink house) is an old mansion in Beirut where the Nawfal family found shelter during the Civil War. Unfortunately for them, their immediate environment is rapidly changing, as many of the old shell-ridden buildings are being torn down and replaced by new construction projects. When Mattar, the owner of the pink house, decides to sell it to make room for a large commercial centre, the residents of the neighbourhood become divided between the shopkeepers and businessmen in favour of a different kind of modernity.

Adashi, ex-member of the Japanese Red Army, narrates a story taking place in Beirut. The melancholy of war, the pain of disillusionment. A story being written and rewritten, open to interpretation. When the time comes, return to reality can only be cruel.