Best Lebanese drama 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 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.

Under the imminent threat of Lebanon's garbage crisis, Hala, a wild child inside of a woman, is the only one to refuse evacuation, clinging to whatever remains of home.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ayman, Syrian refugee in Lebanon, teaching his wife how to drive his car, the only thing left for him from his country. The lesson takes a wrong turn into madness and nostalgia.

Lina, a young girl in war-torn Beirut, finds an ally and friend in Sihan, her domineering aunt's maid. Sihan shows Lina what her life could be like, but tests the girl's limits when she asks her to help plot her escape from the city.

Sham is constantly writing letters and stacking them on her desk. She has to live two lives: A journey is filled with self-love, acceptance, and peace, and another is filled with misery and self-doubt. Will she send the letters, or will they stay unsent?

After surviving a car crash in the middle of Lebanon's isolated Beqaa Valley, an amnesiac man finds himself held hostage on a local farm that doubles as an illegal drug-production facility.

Four elderly men (Fons, Lull, Nuckes and Jängi) are fed up with being walked all over and treated like children. Together with their friends, they plan a future without old people's homes. But that's easier said than done.

A young woman makes her way back home to her parents’ house in the middle of the night leaving a bad experience behind. Haunting pressures to fit back into the family dynamics as well as revealing details of her life abroad weigh heavy on her. Feeling cornered, her anxieties resurface, leading her to find solace in another part of her Beirut life that she had forsaken. A life that is for her as familiar and foreign now as it ever was.

Ali, a delinquent, is living a chaotic life. His life changes when he meets Souraya, a prostitute threatened by Jacques, a mob guy who is having problems at home. One day, while driving him in his cab to his office, Maroun notices their extreme resemblance. The choices of some and the destinies of others meet and change their existences.

Abducted during the Lebanese Civil War and now in his 50s, Ramez is finally a free man. But he returns to society deeply traumatized by the past.

It was the summer of 82, when a priest, about to be ordered, was exhausted by temptations and an arrogant girl felt passionately in love... A sifted memory and a personal history of a narrator who tells with nostalgia and poetry the meeting of his parents until their marriage...

In a village outside of Beirut, amidst scrap metal, chickens and goats, the quiet Fouad runs a mechanic’s garage with a detached but soothing presence. His customers, both old and young, are invited to sit and drink coffee while they wait for their vehicles to be repaired. In these moments of stillness, the garage becomes a haven for people to express their growing despair amidst the economic collapse that surrounds them. No jobs. Sleepless nights. The burden of school tuition. No one is safe. As the darkness closes in, Fouad must undertake a deeply symbolic, transcendent journey through his own psyche: a search for the other side.

"Riverbed" tells the story of Salma and her returning daughter Thuraya, and their attempt to preserve, maintain and reconstruct their lives with and against each other. Salma survived many years by protecting her independence, she reached her peace through letting go of any attachments. But the past does not let go of Salma and brings back Thuraya, defeated, divorced, and pregnant.

Rana and Guy, a young married couple live in today's city of Beirut. Rana quits her job and falls slowly into a state of lingering. Guy decides they need to go on a road-trip that leads them to the mountains. The road becomes one of remembrance and nostalgia. A road that might bring them closer to themselves and to each other.

In a remote and poor village, three girls decide to change their destiny. They plan to rub a truck assuming its loaded with cash.. but what they never imagined is found in the truck and this changes their village and own lives forever.

Beirut Hold’em depicts the life of Ziko, a 40-year old ex-con and petty gambler, and his three boyhood friends, in a seedy, lower-middle class district of Beirut. They’re fighting their way into a country on the edge of war and bankruptcy, where instability makes everyday life feel like Russian roulette, and sheer existence is yet another form of gambling.

In the depths of loneliness and despair, beautiful Aida visits her "tailor," Victoria, a woman who runs a sensual house where erotic fantasies are fulfilled. After satisfying her desires in the arms of one of Victoria's young men, Aida has a haunting nightmare where she envisions herself as a witch who, during a full moon, has the power to destroy her lovers' sensitivity.

Ziyad and Maryam are a happy young couple in Lebanon, yet after three years of marriage they remain childless. Due to intense family pressure, they try everything they can but eventually learn that Maryam is infertile. Ziyad repeatedly reassures her of his undying love, but family and social pressure, particularly his evil, meddling mother, gradually poison their happy relationship until the love, enthusiasm and humour of their early days soon take a tragic turn.

The play tells the story of Socrates, the father of philosophers and one of the founders of philosophy in history. It also tells the history of Athens, the city of thought, and the story of its resistance to the occupation of the city of Sparta.

Tarek, a taxi driver delivers a passenger to an insane asylum called “L’Oisellerie” (aviary) for a brief visit. In this place of peace, whose inmates would like nothing better than their freedom, Tarek finds that leaving is not so easy.

A wealthy woman will allow her grandson to inherit her money on one condition, which is to marry a girl who looks like one of her friends. He starts his search for the suitable girl, eventually meeting Sevannah, an Armenian, who seems to meet the criteria.

(Wajih) loves the young journalist (Nahid) the nurse, and a bitter struggle arises between (Wajih) and (Sami) because of the press campaign he is waging against him, so he tries to buy him with money and does not succeed, and he tries to kidnap him without changing anything, until he decides to kidnap (Nahid) Habiba (Wajih).

When Abu Sayyah decides to travel to Beirut in search for a trading opportunity, he meets a filming crew and falls in love with one of the actresses, who aspires to be the film star. He decides to produce the film for her sake, but the girl warns him against it.

During the early years of the Lebanese civil war inside a mental hospital located in West Beirut, we met seven patients and two drug addicts inside the walls of this hospital who suffer from severe cases, some of which came as a direct result of what happened during the war.

A young Palestinian man living a carefree life undergoes a personal awakening after the loss of a loved one. This transformation leads him to become a committed militant. He trains for special operations and successfully breaks through an Israeli siege using his expertise. Returning to his commando base, he prepares for further resistance efforts.

The famous knight Antarah Ibn Shaddad faces a new adventure as the father of his beloved Abla sets a harsh condition to approve their marriage. To be able to marry Abla, Antarah must get the golden dress that belongs to the lady of the Enchanted Palace, located in the Romans' country.

Luxembourg in the 60s. Youngsters from France come over to a small south Luxembourg village Dudelange to party there. And looking for girls. And then starts the fighting. Teenager love and rock 'n roll.

In the tenth century AD, a Mongol tribe raids Lebanon, kidnaps the knight Hossam, and prepares to seize the tribe. Hossam's lover is able to help him escape from the grip of the Mongols, and he is able to form a fighting army to confront the invading forces. Thanks to training and determination, the Mongols are defeated by the Qaheroun brigade.

Raffi, Paul and Ohan grew up together in war-torn Beirut. Ten years later, we find the childhood friends in Hollywood, caught up in a tougher struggle: the pursuit of the American dream.

Directed by Muhammad Selman.

Filmed in post-war Beirut, Leyla Assaf-Tengroth’s "Al-Sheikha" proposes a trajectory around the city guided by an unusual little girl, hustling to find her bearings in a place that appears both hostile and inspiring.