Reprisal

18 Lebanese filmmakers, driven by the ongoing war in Gaza, transform their personal letters of turmoil into a series of powerful short films, unaware that their own country is on the brink of facing a similar tragic fate.

A woman, alone in bed at night, starts having weird convulsions after a mysterious phone message. A green stain of mold starts growing on the wall in front of her. How will she escape the night?

Joana Hadjithomas and the artist and poet Etel Adnan met fifteen years ago. They quickly became close, sharing a city that they had never been to: Smyrna, in Turkey. Joana’s paternal Greek family were forced into exile from Smyrna by the Turkish armies after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Etel’s Greek mother was also born in Smyrna and was married to a Syrian officer of the Ottoman Army and exiled in Lebanon after the fall of the empire. Etel and Joana have both lived in an imaginary Smyrna, today called Izmir, without ever setting foot there. Nowadays they are confronted with the transmission of history and trauma, questioning their attachment to objects, places, imaginary constructions and mythologies without images. What is to be done with the sorrow of our parents? Their personal experiences, their stories serve as a background to the region’s changes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the evolution of the borders questioning the notion of identity and belonging.