Best Lebanese movies

After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the life they have given him.

In sixth-century Mecca, Prophet Muhammad receives his first revelation from God as a messenger. Three years later, he's not alone in his quest and publicly declares his prophecy. Muhammad is fought by Abu Sufian and his wife Hind, rulers of Mecca. Muhammad's followers are hunted and tortured but he continues his calling.

In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.

In a remote, isolated Lebanese village surrounded by land mines, Muslims and Christians live together in peace. As civil strife starts to engulf the country around them, the women in the village try, by various means and to varying success, to keep their men in the dark by sabotaging the village radio, and then destroying the village TV.

Stranded on a deserted island, a family of four scavenges for survival as their past unravels, sending them into a downward spiral of painful events.

Disillusioned with his life in the suburbs of segregated Beirut, Omar's unusual discovery lures him into the depth of the city. Immersed into a world that is so close yet so isolated from his reality, he finds himself struggling to keep his attachments, his sense of home.

Members of a family quit the polluted, rubbish-strewn city of Beirut for an idyllic mountain home. However, their dreams of a utopian existence are shattered by the construction of a landfill on the boundary of their land.

Farid, who works abroad, locks himself on the last day of his stay in Beirut in his son Rawad's room, to find what he is hiding there. Separated by a locked door, the dysfunctional dynamic between them intensifies, and the past resurfaces.

An intimate, and often humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family in the lives of those for whom dispossession is the norm, and yearning their daily lives.

Four tragicomic interconnected stories about how devoted Muslim men and women are trying to manage their love life and desires without breaking any religious rules.

Kunsthal Charlottenborg and CPH:DOX present an exhibition with the French star artist Laure Prouvost, who will open the festival’s first day.

A dark comedy about brothers running a drug-dealing business out of their takeout pizzeria.

For 15 months, 45 inmates, some completely illiterate, worked together to present an adaptation of Reginald Rose's famous stage play 12 Angry Men.

Follows inmates from Roumieh Prison in Lebanon who produce a play about their fellow prisoners who suffer from mental illness and are thus filed under 'Mad and Possessed' by the Penal Code and forgotten behind bars for life.

When filmmaker Wael Kadlo picks up his mother from the airport in Beirut, it seems like a rather warm family visit. But Kadlo, who was born in Damascus in 1980, has some questions he needs to ask her.

A short film about my cat Kara... being Kara.

Samar is a beautiful girl living with her sisters. When someone tried to exploit her in some illegal activities, Samar decides to volunteer for civil defense. There, she falls in love with one of her colleagues.

Beirut, civil war. There are checkpoints, arbitrary executions, car bombs, machine guns, handguns, funeral processions, ambushes, hot heads, vendettas, and revenge. Cruelty and death are everywhere. Akram, who's been studying in Russia, is back in Beirut on holiday and plans to visit his mother in his home village. But can he get there? He spends time with friends in the city; they tell stories of death. Danger is on all sides. Driving down the street may lead to murder. Touches of the surreal appear: are they real, are they dreams? Can Akram survive? If so, at what cost?

A Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut volunteers to cover a shift on one of the most dangerous cranes, where he is able to find his freedom.

The murderer of Jabal’s father, is spotted alive in Bulgaria. Jabal heads a fierce hunt passing by Bulgaria and Istanbul. With the aim to bring Nazem back to justice to Al Hayba village.

Therese, the mayor's wife in a Lebanese village, joyfully prepares for an overnight visit of her daughter's suitor and his parents. She excitedly shares the happy news of the engagement with pictures of her beloved brother who was killed by a Syrian bomb 20 years ago and is still bizarrely present in every corner of her house. Only when the long-awaited guests are at her doorstep, she discovers they are Syrian; this engagement will only happen over Therese's dead body!

Many people first became aware of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon after the shocking and horrific Sabra-Shatila massacre that took place there in 1982. Located in Beirut's "belt of misery," the camp is home to 15,000 Palestinians and Lebanese who share a common experience of displacement, unemployment and poverty. Fifty years after the exile of their grandparents from Palestine, the children of Shatila attempt to come to terms with the reality of being refugees in a camp that has survived massacre, siege and starvation. Director Mai Masri focuses on two Palestinian children in the camp: Farah, age 11 and Issa, age 12. When these children are given video cameras, the story of the camp evolves from their personal narratives as they articulate the feelings and hopes of their generation.

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

Twelve Palestinian women sit before us and talk of their life before the Diaspora, of their memories, of their lives and of their identity. Their narratives are connected by the enduring thread of the ancient art of embroidery. Twelve resilient, determined and articulate women from disparate walks of life: lawyers, artists, housewives, activists, architects, and politicians stitch together the story of their homeland, of their dispossession, and of their unwavering determination that justice will prevail. Through their stories, the individual weaves into the collective, yet remaining distinctly personal. Twelve women, twelve life-spans, and stories from Palestine; a land whose position was fixed on the map of the world, but is now embroidered on its face.

A unique historical portrait of the Palestinian people's struggle to produce their own image. Using material long hidden in archives across the globe, the film reaches back through the modern history of Palestine and reverses decades of colonial dominance with a mosaic of struggle from the perspective of the colonized.

Lara has not been herself lately, a fact that everyone around mentions constantly. She is dealing with a traumatic incident silently, and when Vanessa, her childhood best friend, pushes her to join in a relaxing weekend in an isolated resort, Lara reluctantly agrees. This idyllic retreat reveals its true intent when Amir arrives, Lara quickly finds out that this is a trap to silence her against speaking up about the incident with Amir. When a confrontation between Lara and Amir turns deadly, she must find her inner strength and fight her way through the night to make it out alive.

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 both in Palestine and in Lebanon.

After 15 years in France, Kamal returns to his native Beirut and reassembles his dance crew, striving to modernize traditional Dabke routines.

In the Lebanese wintery wilderness, a mini-van arrives. Two men get off the van into the cold forest and set off on their quest. The tall trees and the grey sky are their witnesses. Armored with a shovel, a rope, and an axe, they soon arrive at their destination: a lonely verdant tree amid the naked forest.

The feature tells the story of a severely traumatized woman, after her husband was killed and her son kidnapped. 4 years has passed and her son Fadi is still lost.

The film is set around 1914 when Lebanon was under the Ottoman Empire rule. The empire enslaved men to work for free. Abdou goes to get Adla the engagement ring but he's arrested with others and are taken to cut lumber. Meanwhile the Ottomans prevent the wheat from arriving to certain villages because they want to defuse the ongoing resistance operations led by Abou Ahmed. Adla travels to where some say Abdou is held prisoner and she meets with Abou Ahmed. She along other villagers start helping the resistance get the wheat to the people. When they accomplish their mission, Abou Ahmed, freed Abdou and others escape because now they're wanted, but on a promise to return and to continue fighting.

This hushed, pared-down essay weaves together different facts and myths surrounding the moon: images, texts, and sounds are spun into a dense, delicate tissue of ideas, with humans both at the centre and infinitely small in this celestial context.

A family lives poorly in a village in the Lebanese mountain. One day the father abandons his family and leaves for Brazil, considered an Eldorado by a great number of his compatriots. Twenty years pass. The mother raised her children with great difficulty: the elder has a family and the younger one is getting ready to immigrate to Brazil. One day a ragged old man arrives to the village.

A symbolic and poetic video evoking a changing situation through female body swimming in the sea.

In 1976 Beirut, after a rendezvous with her old flame, soon-to-wed Noha witnesses a violent incident and changes course on a path to self-realization.

Lost in Beirut with his grandfather, who is no longer in his right mind, Abboudi, a young Syrian boy, must now act like an adult and set out in search of a medicine to restore the old man's memory...

To find her stolen scooter, Arze drags her rebellious son on an adventurous journey across Beirut, navigating the city’s web of sectarianism with wit and courage while revealing to her son a long- overdue family secret.

Josephine, the matriarch of a sprawling family, is delighted to gather everyone for Easter lunch for the first time in two years. While they all share a joyful meal, an incident ignites underlying tensions between the family members and leads them gradually into chaos.

In a peaceful village, the mayor, seeing that the population is bored with tranquility, invents the mystical figure of Rajeh, and tells stories to villagers about the exploits of Rajeh, who kills and maims and steals. One day the mayor tells the villagers that Rajeh is heading to the village itself and they better be careful. Two smart men notice that the mayor was lying and that it is all his imagination. So they go on making good on the fictitious person and steal money and assault the mayor in the dark saying that they were Rajeh. Eventually, an old man with the name of Rajeh arrives in the village, amid public fears. Then it became obvious that Rajeh was merely a seller of rings for weddings and he wanted to marry his son to Rima, the mayor's niece. The two bad guys willingly go to jail for making use of the mayor's joke.

Amidst the popular uprising against the Syrian regime that began in 2011, a group of former Lebanese detainees decides to break their long-held silence about the horrific years they spent imprisoned in Tadmor (Palmyra), one of the Assad regime's most dreadful prisons. They decide to testify publicly about the systematic torture and humiliation they experienced. To reclaim and overcome this dark chapter in their lives, they rebuild Tadmor in an abandoned school near Beirut. By playing the role of both "victim" and "victimizer," they will relive their survival.

13-year-old Khodor is a child whose family tries to issue him an ID document that proves his existence and gives him the right to education, health-care and movement outside of the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon. Through the process, many of the family's old secrets are revealed.

The play takes place in the village of Mays Al-Reem, which Zayoun (Fayruz) arrives on her way to Kazaa Kahlon to attend the wedding of her cousin, along with the wedding dress. Zayoun is a free, civil, and decision-making civilian girl. Her car broke down in Mays Al-Reem, and she asked about a car repair workshop in Al-Dayaa.

A generous and lyrical continuation of Lebanese artist Marwa Arsanios’ interest in the ties between ecology, feminism, and collective organization, this documentary showcases the radical politics of a Lebanese farming cooperative and the citizens of Jinwar, a women-only village in the north of Syria.

Beirut, on an autumn day. The city is on the edge of chaos, but for Maya, Tarek, Yasmina and Rami, aged between 17 and 22 years old, it is just an ordinary day during which they question themselves about sex, love and night time hanging out.

In the late 1960s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, Leninist guerrilla movement. Director Heiny Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, to reach the conflict zone and capture this rare record of a now mostly-forgotten war.

In Differdange, in the South of Luxembourg, six unemployed men decide to create the "Dole Club", whose rules forbid its members to work, even in the very unlikely event that they are offered a job. Geronimo, Théid, Frunnes, Sonny Boy, Abbes and Petz all agree to abide by the strict regulations of the club. In accordance with them, they manage to survive. But they can do it only on petty theft and other swindles, which is bound to end badly...

Chaos erupts in a village after a series of burglaries take place, prompting Najma, the daughter of a guard, to think of a solution. She disguises herself as a man and becomes the village vigilante.

Everything bad that can happen on the way to a party happens to young Tou on this nighttime trip though Beirut.

The romp revolves around a dinner party hosted by the young and vicacious Nayla to introduce Fares, the love of her life, to Silvio, her new fiancé.

Two troubled teens in Luxembourg act out their frustrations on the world, and slowly grow closer.

The camera wanders through streets standing witness to a war that has destroyed a city and an entire nation. Bagdadi goes to war against the Lebanese civil war, exploring different locations and situations in a country faced with its own demise. The poetic text raises questions of life and death through contrasting images of violent death and the will to live.

Beirut resident Soraya is drawn to two men: daredevil photographer Nabil and Talal, who must embrace his feudal heritage when his father is kidnapped.

Late in the 1980s it seems like the Lebanese conflict will never end. Khalil returns to Beirut after many years. Ten years earlier, during a battle, he took advantage of the confusion and pretended he was dead.

Deep in the earth beneath the Norwegian permafrost, seeds from all over the world are stored in the Global Seed Vault to provide a backup should disaster strike. For the first time ever, seeds held there from a major gene bank in Aleppo are now being replicated, after its holdings were left behind when the institution had to move to Lebanon due to the civil war. It is refugees from Syria who are carrying out this painstaking work in the fields of the Beqaa Valley. In the Levant, dry conditions and the power of global agricultural corporations are the biggest challenge, while in the Arctic Circle - where the seed vault was supposed to withstand anything - it is rising temperatures and melting glaciers.

Beauty lies in little things.

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.

A researcher in plant sciences returns home to his village in rural Lebanon to attend his father's funeral. During the three-day-long Christian Greek Orthdox memorial he discovers that a pathogen is infecting the trees across his village. A dark comedy about tradition, grief, and the environment.

As Reem is preparing for her wedding at a big resort, her sister Amal, who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, seeks to spoil the big day with the help of Reem's ex-boyfriend, Adel.

Mazen, a struggling young man, is addicted to living large on a less-than-mediocre income. He falls in love with a co-worker, Elsa, who happens to be high-society. One day, Mazen saves a rich philanthropist’s life and is awarded a credit card that can withdraw a thousand US dollars every day. Mazen’s life turns around overnight.

The year is 620 A.D., North Lebanon. Living with God is men's privilege and the most unreachable women's right. Stubborn as she is, the 20 year-old revolutionary girl breaks the rules and endures all the consequences.

Etienne is taken by his friends to a prostitute for the first time. Three troubled teens on their way to win their acceptance into manhood. Though several unexpected occurrences take Etienne on an unforeseen journey into himself.

A capsule from Chantal Partamian’s "Katsakh" project, experiments on and with film originally published on Instagram. “Katsakh” means vinegar in Armenian, in reference to the vinegar syndrome, “the chemical degradation that occurs with cellulous acetate film”.