Semaan bil day'ia
The one-man village
Simon El Habre / Lebanon / 2008 / 86 min / Colour
Italian premiere
Semaan lives a simple, tranquil life on his farm in the small Christian village of Ain el-Halazoun, in the Lebanese mountains. The village was totally destroyed and abandoned during the civil and religious war that battered Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. Today, many years after the official reconciliation, its inhabitants regularly return to the village to cultivate the gardens and visit their former homes, but they leave in the evening, at sunset. From a discreet and humorous viewpoint, the director observes what remains of life in this village that has become a ghost town and tries to reflect on collective and individual memory, in a country that seems to have lost both, and that is always one step from a new civil war. The story of Semaan, who going against the tide decides to return home, is also, above all, the story of a wound that heals slowly.
Simon El Habre
Credits
Language Arabic Subject Simon El Habre Cinematography Bassem Fayad, Marc Karam Sound Chadi Rokouz Editing Simon El Habre Producer Simon El Habre, Jad Abi-Khalil, Irit Neidhart Production company Beirut DC
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