Karim Ghorayeb

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 He feels the Lebanese queer past hasn’t been archived well enough so he views Adonis as the golden hen.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?

After a client wiht an unusual birhtmark knocks on the doors of the apartment of a transgender artist, the latter tries to piece together where the two of them have previously met.

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.

Two women meet as waitresses and tentatively become friends. They are both from the Levant and living in exile in France. A film about the Silk Road, about exploitation – then and now – and about female solidarity, friendship and solace.

Etienne is taken by his friends to a prostitute for the first time. Three troubled teens on their way to win their acceptance into manhood. Though several unexpected occurrences take Etienne on an unforeseen journey into himself.

Leba is a music instructor who lives in a small Lebanese town. Social pressure leads him to get married and have children. Lara, his beloved wife, births a girl, later other one and finally Ghadi, a boy with special needs related with Down Syndrome. Ghadi could have been a burden, but he is a cause of pride and joy for all of them —but a test too that proves the intolerance of other people.

This heartwarming love story follows a father who turns to ultra-running in his quest to find a cure for his daughter’s condition. At the age of 59, in the aftermath of the Beirut Port Explosion of August 4, he embarks on an epic journey to run the Lebanon Mountain Trail (470 kilometers of rugged terrain), with his daughter Saria as his medal at the finish line.