Lebanese cinema aims at catharsis

The big screen has become a medium for self-expression in a country that was falling apart. As with films before it, the recent release Mirath focuses on Lebanon's civil war with a view to heloing people come to terms with a dark past.

A scene from Mirath (Heritages) by the director Philippe Aractingi. Dolce Vita Films

Lebanon’s civil war ended a quarter of a century ago but its filmmakers remain fixated on this dark period, seeing their movies as a kind of catharsis to help heal the collective trauma.

The industry’s focus contrasts sharply with a society that has yet to come to terms with its devastating past, where war has marked the previous five generations – and each community, be it Christian or Muslim, looks at past events through a different lens.

The latest example to hit the screen is Mirath (Heritages) by the French-Lebanese filmmaker Philippe Aractingi.

Mixing fact and fiction, Aractingi shares with his children memories of the 1975-1990 war, his exile and his return home, a story to which most Lebanese can relate.

“The Lebanese tend to deny the past and the war,” Aractingi says. The conflict pitted Christian militias against Palestinian groups and their Lebanese-Muslim and leftist allies.

"So discussing the war through cinema is kind of cathartic. In Mirath, I talk about how we need to communicate with our children, so that [war] never returns."

Among Aractingi's other films are 2005's Bosta (The Autobus) and 2007's Under the Bombs, both of which represented Lebanon at the Academy Awards.

Before the war, the ironic yet deeply romantic films of the Rahbani brothers marked Lebanon’s golden age of cinema in the 1960s.

But then came the war, which ripped the country apart and deepened the sectarian divide. About 150,000 people were killed and thousands disappeared.

The big screen became a medium for self-expression in a country that was falling apart.

Two filmmakers’ names stood out during the civil-war years: Burhan Alawiyeh and the ­internationally renowned Maroun Baghdadi, who died at the age of 43, soon after the conflict ended.

Major productions by Baghdadi – notably Little Wars (1982) and Out of Life (1991), about western journalists being taken hostage – ushered in a string of films about the "events", a euphemism the Lebanese still use to refer to the war.

In the post-war 1990s, Ziad Doueiri's West Beirut portrayed the lives of adolescents divided by war, winning the François Chalais prize at Cannes.

A lull followed but since 2005 – when the former prime minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated and Syria’s near 30-year domination of Lebanon ended – there has been a return to the civil-war genre, according to the filmmaker and professor Hadi Zakak.

“Filmmakers have since tried to go to the heart of the problem, to explain why Lebanon is still at war, even if in a different form,” he says.

In the past nine years, the country has been rocked by political crises, the targeted killings of politicians and journalists, sectarian clashes and a war with Israel.

“Since 2005, there has been an undeclared civil war,” says Zakak. “Filmmakers are therefore trying to understand the past to make sense of the present.”

Deadly clashes in recent years, especially since the war began in neighbouring Syria, are a reminder that the threat of renewed sectarian conflict is never far away.

In March, 27 people were killed in Tripoli during 12 days of fighting between Sunni Muslim fighters, who support Syria’s rebels, and gunmen from the Alawite minority, who back the Syrian regime.

Nadine Labaki, the director of the 2007 comedy Caramel, made Where Do We Go Now? in 2011, a poignant and funny film in which Christian and Muslim women in a village try to convince their husbands to stop fighting each other.

While many aspects of Lebanon’s civil war remain unresolved, one of the most painful is the issue of forced disappearances.

Bahij Hojeij's 2011 film Here Comes The Rain tells the story of the difficult return home of a man who spent 20 years in captivity.

In 2013, Eliane Al Raheb made Layali Bala Nawm (Sleepless Nights), which portrays the ­meeting of an ex-militiaman with the mother of a disappeared ­fighter.

Yet despite all the attention from filmmakers, the civil war is still deemed “too sensitive” for schools and kept off the curriculum.

“When I see these films, I feel like I’m discovering my own country,” says Christiane, a 22-year-old, who was born after the civil war ended.

Aractingi believes the country’s filmmakers have their work cut out for the foreseeable future.

“Movies about the war will be made as long as the Lebanese keep living in denial of their past,” he says.