Borhane Alaouié

A time travel film incorporating truthful moments and confessions that takes us back to Beirut of the 80s, Palestine of the 50s, and dystopian Paris.

Love always wins The class struggle between loving the poor, or asking yourself an excuse to be selfish for trying to live a luxury life,

Love always wins The class struggle between loving the poor, or asking yourself an excuse to be selfish for trying to live a luxury life,

Love always wins The class struggle between loving the poor, or asking yourself an excuse to be selfish for trying to live a luxury life,

After “Letter From a Time of Exile”, the director is back in Lebanon where he discovers that his dreams about his country are an illusion and that the exile in your homeland is by far the worst exile. Programmer's Note: Borhane Alaouié returns to Beirut from his exile. His documentary film constitutes a new letter at the start of the 21st century in reply to the letters of the 1980s. The reconstruction process appears to affect stones more than people.

The second Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 represents in the collective Arab memory a turning point in regards to the Arab nationalism’s self-perception as well as a moment of deep historical and existential insecurity. Five Arab directors discuss the events from their personal perspective.

This is Egypt and one of its symbols, Sad Al-Ali, the massive wonder that is the high dam of Aswan. With a first-person narrative in a soft, husky voice, the film explores the memory of the Nile Valley to tell the story of Lake Nasser and the ecological and human consequences of this construction. Floods caused by the Ethiopian rains spread the silt and evacuated the algae. The order of nature was disrupted, the salt rose and cracked the earth, the crops burned. Sea water reached the water tables. The Nubians fled the valley engulfed by the waters, leaving behind their villages and their culture. Twenty-five years after the construction of the dam, there is no longer any coherence between the lower valley and the Nile. The city of Cairo has expanded, a heterogeneous development where human pollution overflows. The film is a bitter reflection on a lost human philosophy, a dialogue constantly renewed with the land and its river.

Alaouié presents the stories of four exiles from Beirut. Their only connection is the voice of the narrator and their situation of living in exile in Europe. Told with a subtle humor, the film sketches four highly individual portraits of people, whose lives have taken unexpected turns due to the madness of the Civil War.

Filmed in Beirut in the Spring of 1984, in many ways a letter about warfront.

Zeina (Nadine Acoury) is a Catholic student whose good friend Haidar (Haithem El Amine), a Muslim, has always been particularly close. After a futile attempt to get together (he gets caught in traffic), they each decide to make an audio tape trying to explain, based on their own ideas, why there continues to be fighting in Lebanon now, in 1977, and why they are against it. Zeina is about to leave for the United States and Haidar is to meet her at the airport, where they will exchange their tapes. Alas, fate intervenes because when he arrives early at the airport, he is harassed by someone looking to prey on gullible refugees and he gets so angry that he grabs a taxi out of there, throwing his tape away as he does so. When Zeina arrives and realizes he is not there, she is broken-hearted. In a strange twist at the end, the cast and the director (Borhane Alaouie) have a discussion as to whether or not the character of Haidar should kill himself.

The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy talks about his life and work. Footage of Cairo, Gharb Assouan, New Gourna, Kom-Ombo.

On the eve of the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, Israel decalres Martial law in all the occupied Arab teritories without any previous notice. When the villagers of Kafar Kassem returned home from the fields, they were butchered and killed in what is known today as the massacre of “Kafar Kassem”.

On the eve of the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, Israel decalres Martial law in all the occupied Arab teritories without any previous notice. When the villagers of Kafar Kassem returned home from the fields, they were butchered and killed in what is known today as the massacre of “Kafar Kassem”.