Joachim Michaux

Emilienne could have been my grandmother if she hadn’t had a taste for travelling. In her home village in the heart of the Jura Mountains, she remembers the years she spent in New York. I discover scraps of her unsuspected life there in the super8 films that she has entrusted to me. Yet something else captures my attention…

November 1989: in Brussels, Victor is looking for Elina, his summer love who mysteriously vanished. He meets Damian, an enlightened English journalist, and Rosie, a punkish Dutch barmaid. Together, they dive into the night, driven by the New Beat fever.

My entrance into Lebanon was through my encounter with Yasmeen Baz, a young Lebanese producer of electronic music, and with her father Patrick. It is through their inner voices that I try to paint a sensitive and subjective portrait of contemporary Lebanon. I also witnessed the gradual emergence of a third character, the city of Beirut, which is constantly being destroyed and rebuilt, and which carries within itself the heritage of their past. Beyond a confrontation between inner truth and objective reality, this film is a reflection on violence and interrogates the need to see and produce images of destruction, thereby echoing the war photojournalism of Patrick Baz.