Marcel Khalife

A drama centered on an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict.

In impoverished Baghdad under Saddam's dictatorship, 16-year-old Amal hopes to regain her social status at school by volunteering to find a book as a class gift for the departing literature teacher. Meanwhile, her emotionally fragile little brother becomes obsessed with the notion that a visiting uncle from America--whom he confuses with Santa Claus--will bring him toys. Ashamed never to have been able to give his son a toy, the child's father sells some more prized family possessions and buys a model car for him.

Accompanying from a place to another the poet who spent years in exile far from his native land of al-Birwa, in Haifa, Cyprus, Tunis, Amman, Paris, Cairo and Ramallah.

When her illegal husband is deported from Canada, Bassima, a young Syrian woman, finds herself in a difficult situation, both socially and financially. Desperately looking for a way to bring her husband back, she agrees to become a surrogate mother in exchange for a false passport for him. However, she soon finds out that she is already pregnant and must give up her own child.

Letter from Beirut documents the filmmaker's return to Beirut during one of the lulls, three years after the outbreak of the civil war, animated by the urge to return. She is confronted by the physical, emotional and psychological ravages of the war, terrified and sorrowful, she cannot find her place in the city. In that quest, she communicates with everyday people, friends, neighbors, people riding the bus across the city's eastern and western flanks. To pace her journeying and dramatic unraveling of the film, Saab borrows the guise of a letter read in a voice-over, written by world-renowned poet Etel Adnan. A rare document from the civil war, Letter from Beirut lays bare and spontaneously how people make sense of their everyday in the midst of chaos, violence, terror and sorrow.

Thirty-year-old Imane lives with her husband and three children in a modest house across from the historic citadel of Aleppo. She suddenly realizes that it's been ten years that she's been married, ten years during which she's done basically nothing more than take care of her husband and their three children.

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. He won numerous awards for his works. Darwish used Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile.

A trip with Ziad Rahbani and his team into the making of "Houdou Nisbi".