As Israel steps up air strikes in Lebanon, Beirut’s beloved Metropolis Cinema – championed by Lebanese filmmakers as an indie cinema beacon amid bombings, despair and dysfunction – has announced it is forging ahead with the second edition of its South Screens (Écrans du Sud) festival.
“In times shaped by war, silence, and uncertainty, we gather once again around cinema; not to escape reality, but to face it together,” the fest – which will feature works by Oliver Laxe, Saeed Roustaee, Rungano Nyoni, Park Chan-wook, Lucrecia Martel, Cherien Dabis, and more – said in a Facebook post.
Laxe, whose Oscar-nominated “Sirat” is playing at the fest, is making the trek to Beirut to give a master class on June 3.
The South Screens festival, running May 28-June 6, will kick off Thursday with Lebanese director Dima El-Horr’s “And The Fish Fly Above Our Heads” that depicts the current war-torn reality of Lebanon through the lives of three aging men—Reda, Adel, and Qassem—who spend their days on a public beach in Beirut.
The closer will be Palestinian-American director Cherien Dabis’s sweeping origins story “All That’s Left of You” featuring three generations of Palestinians that premiered at Sundance.
