Sélim Mourad

As Linda prepares to dance in a cabaret in Beirut, the end of the Lebanese Civil War is proclaimed. The announcement of the Syrian regime’s troops entering Lebanon makes Linda question whether the war has truly come to an end.

A visit to a cosmetic-surgery clinic and the discovery of a lump in his testicle and an abscess in his mouth confront filmmaker Selim Mourad with transience and decay in this unashamedly navel-gazing film essay. ‘Selim from Beirut’ is the last in a long list of names of extinct species he recites during a loveless Grindr meet up.

18 Lebanese filmmakers, driven by the ongoing war in Gaza, transform their personal letters of turmoil into a series of powerful short films, unaware that their own country is on the brink of facing a similar tragic fate.

The director turns the diary of his sexual adventures into a serial narrative in the style of “One Thousand and One Nights”. This polyamorously-minded queer musical applies the same playful approach to folk tales as it does to Egyptian pop music.

Three friends take an 8-day road journey to make sense of Lebanon at this moment in time. Each detour in their journey makes for a spectacular experience of co-narration and listening in the face of uncertainty.

In today's Beirut, different characters with unique stories navigate their lives without fully realizing their true desires, which contradict their status quo. As a result, their joy of living becomes a distant dream that feels increasingly unattainable.

A young man's tragic death at Beirut's seaside causes his friends to grapple with loss and to partake in his community's rites and ceremonies, exposing the city's schisms and its society's fault lines

Adonis is a queer seventy-three-year-old man. He currently lives in the Ashrafieh district of Beirut. He continues to water his numerous plants daily and host his numerous friends for cheerful dinners every other week. Adonis is full of stories from the sixties, seventies, eighties and the nineties. Though he did not live continuously in the country, he has been travelling the world, with constant visits to his homeland. Conversations with him can easily switch from academic intricacies to plain old gossip about sexual matters or unresolved crimes. Ameer is a thirty-something younger man who wants to gather stories and anecdotes from Adonis. He feels the Lebanese queer past hasn’t been archived well enough so he views Adonis as the golden hen. However, when he notices Adonis has it easier to be physically nude than to reveal the full nudity of his feelings, he starts feeling frustrated. What else to expect, would Adonis say, from someone who always lived a double life?