Mauritania

In the early summer of 1976, right-wing militias representing a coalition of ultra-nationalist and counter-revolutionary forces laid siege to the refugee camp of Tall al-Zaatar (“Hill of Thyme”) in Beirut. After holding out for months without food, water, or medical supplies, and under heavy artillery and sniper fire, the camp fell to the militias on 12 August. What followed was one of the worst atrocities of the civil war, with over 2,500 civilians massacred and the camp razed to the ground. Produced after the massacre, but featuring footage shot before and during the siege, Tall al-Zaatar remembers the camp and its community, recounting the long months of siege and resistance, and recalling the horrors of the massacre through the testimony of survivors.

The life of St. Anastasia of Alexandria

The life story of St. John Chrysostom

The life of St. Marina AKA Marinus (Marinos)

The life of St. Mary of Egypt

The life of St. Moses the Black

A film promoting orphan's cause.

Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version) is an experimental documentary about "The Western Hostage Crisis." The crisis refers to the abduction and detention of Westerners in Lebanon in the 80s and early 90s by "Islamic militants." This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, U.S., French, and British political and public life, and precipitated a number of high-profile political scandals like the Iran-Contra affair in the U.S. This period is examined through the testimony of Souheil Bachar, who was the only Arab to have been detained with the American hostages kidnapped in Beirut in the 1980s. In 1999, Bachar collaborated with The Atlas Group to produce 53 videotapes about his captivity. Tapes #17 and #31 are the only two tapes Bachar makes available outside of Lebanon. In the tapes, Bachar addresses the cultural, textual, and sexual aspects of his detention with the Americans.

a film crew goes to shoot in a small Syrian village.

To transport a newly purchased sofa to your home is an easy task. In a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, this task becomes a Sisyphean journey revealing the complexities and absurdities of everyday life in the Shatila camp in Lebanon.

In a working class suburb of Cairo, Egypt, where lives are intertwined and everybody knows each other's business, thirteen year old Fingo wants to hang lights in his street for Ramadan. Many in his neighborhood try to dissuade him, or say it's not possible. This makes him more determined, but he only has two days, and the obstacles he faces seem insurmountable.

A short film by Nadine Khan

After “Letter From a Time of Exile”, the director is back in Lebanon where he discovers that his dreams about his country are an illusion and that the exile in your homeland is by far the worst exile. Programmer's Note: Borhane Alaouié returns to Beirut from his exile. His documentary film constitutes a new letter at the start of the 21st century in reply to the letters of the 1980s. The reconstruction process appears to affect stones more than people.

Tango of Yearning (1998) is the first episode of an autobiographical trilogy on postwar Lebanon, later including Nightfall (2000) and Civil War (2002). Taking its title from Tango of Hope, a classic ballad by Nur al-Huda, the film draws from the director’s reflections on war, love, and cinema, as well as his personal experience at the public television channel TéléLiban. Conjuring various snippets of audiovisual archival material, the film is a poetic elegy to film, Beirut’s movie theaters, and a city undergoing radical transformation. Mohamed Soueid has long been a proponent of the experimental video documentary movement in Lebanon, playing a significant role in the country’s creative renaissance since the end of the civil war. Originally trained as a news videographer during the war, the experience offered him a facility with the medium, which he further developed by making non-linear documentary films with a distinctly personal take.

Caught between chasing his past and accepting his impending end, a man follows his childhood memories through the dark alleyways and desolate cemeteries of Boujad, Morocco.