Denis Liakhov

A playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage. It is a love letter to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche – marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss. Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers and artists, the film reconstructs a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as both resistance, renewal and a way to preserve memory.

Last December, in full lockdown, I decided to call my mother in Russia to talk about this day, almost 5 years ago, when I came to tell her that I was ill.

There exists a line between resistance and satisfaction, faith and sin, pleasure and danger. These six short films explore how in all our lives, there exists the temptation to cross that line.

Vlad, a young closeted Russian homosexual, returns to his small hometown from Moscow. His brother Liokha has arranged a surprise for him: an evening in the sauna with a female prostitute.