Shapes of Normal Human Beings

A young man's tragic death at Beirut's seaside causes his friends to grapple with loss and to partake in his community's rites and ceremonies, exposing the city's schisms and its society's fault lines

The director turns the diary of his sexual adventures into a serial narrative in the style of “One Thousand and One Nights”. This polyamorously-minded queer musical applies the same playful approach to folk tales as it does to Egyptian pop music.

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.

At the heart of this bold and compelling hybrid film are questions about the significance of lineage and what is bequeathed. The film begins with Selim Mourad staging a portrait of his own nuclear family, in which he claims a place on his own terms while facing up to the fact that he will not father a family because he is same-sex loving. After his sister’s passing, Mourad became his parents’ only child, but he is burdened with the knowledge that he is the last male to carry the family name. Meanwhile, the old building where his family lives and was bequeathed by his grandfather, is falling apart, but neither his father, nor aunt, can afford the cost of repairs.

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 He feels the Lebanese queer past hasn’t been archived well enough so he views Adonis as the golden hen.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

In today's Beirut, different characters with unique stories navigate their lives without fully realizing their true desires, which contradict their status quo. As a result, their joy of living becomes a distant dream that feels increasingly unattainable.

A night shoot. The Crew is exhausted. The Producer is enraged. The Director is lost. The Star is killed. The Gun is real. Everyone is a suspect.

Beirut, summer, 2012: Life here seems as normal as this city can provide. Something is bubbling underneath, though. As people go about their normal lives, a young man gets chased around the streets of the eclectic Hamra district. Meanwhile, a suspicious-looking bag easily changes hands, and heads to an unknown destination around a busy cafe.

In 1929, Roger Salardenne wrote Le culte de la nudité based on nudist experiments in Weimar Germany. Accompanied by a troop of completely naked actors in the confined space of a house, Selim Mourad offers a free adaptation of this text.

Text messages to a boyfriend in Roanne, everyday conversation with parents in Beirut, the life in Copenhagen. A love letter painted with isolation of living in a foreign land and the intimate time spent together with the director's loved ones.