Drawing on the Arab heritage of oral tradition and mosaic pattern, Leila and the Wolves is an exploration of the collective memory of Arab women and their hidden role in history throughout the past half century of the Middle East, both in Palestine and in Lebanon. The film is a modern-day fairy tale about the suppressed history of Arab people and especially Arab women. Through the eyes of Leila, a Lebanese student dissatisfied with the official, colonial, male-dominated version of "history," the film reconstructs women's daily unglamorous and silent sacrifices as much a part of history as men's military "heroic" action.
Hend
Farouk Beloufa's only directorial endeavor follows the life of a group of leftist friends in West Beirut in the early 1970s. Coupled with its exploration of war through photography and cinematography, Nahla is a love story starring the glamorous Yasmine Khlat and featuring a soundtrack composed by Ziad Rahbani.
Thuraya
As the Lebanese civil war rages outside in the streets of Beirut, life in the Sandy Snack bar goes as usual, serving as a microcosm to Beirut in particular and Lebanon in general. Zakaria is a bartender who -- like the rest of his compatriots -- suffers from the increasing prices and lack of security. In order to get by, he brings his wife Thorayya to assist him in the bar and to sell herself to the clientele outside the bar. The play focuses on Zakaria's struggle between his jealousy and feeling like a cuckold and his inability to return to poverty by asking his wife to stop working.
