Moondove

Traffic rushes by as if nothing has happened. But beside the road, the rubble is smoldering, and firefighting helicopters are circling overhead. Ten minutes in, this is the first specific image we see of the devastating explosion that took place on 4 August 2020 at the Port of Beirut. Until this point, its presence in the film has been indirect—a man smoking beside a broken window, the distant sounds of ships’ horns and sirens.

In a village outside of Beirut, amidst scrap metal, chickens and goats, the quiet Fouad runs a mechanic’s garage with a detached but soothing presence. His customers, both old and young, are invited to sit and drink coffee while they wait for their vehicles to be repaired. In these moments of stillness, the garage becomes a haven for people to express their growing despair amidst the economic collapse that surrounds them. No jobs. Sleepless nights. The burden of school tuition. No one is safe. As the darkness closes in, Fouad must undertake a deeply symbolic, transcendent journey through his own psyche: a search for the other side.

A Lebanese filmmaker (Karim) travels from New York to Beirut to conduct research for a film that he wants to make about blind children in the mountains of Lebanon. He arrives to Beirut with a condition that had been affecting his eyes and causes him to go straight into surgery, temporarily blinding him with patches covering his eyes. He uses the healing time to reflect, write and spend time with his family. The filmmaker then begins to visit the blind institute where he will conduct his research and attempts to cast someone to play himself in parallel, which doesn't go as planned. Little does the institute know that Karim has no treatment to pitch but continues to visit the classrooms and attend in order to find his characters.

A discontented housewife self-medicates as her husband assumes control of their daughter's engagement preparations.