BEIRUT long has been a troubled city. Although the situation in Lebanon continues to stabilize, the scars remain. Two visionary filmmakers, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, confront those scars of war in their new film “A Perfect Day” (“Yaoumon Aakhar”), which is now showing in Paris and already has garnered several awards at European film festivals.
The two Beiruti teachers also have garnered praise for their innovative productions, which employ imaginative scripting and filming to convey the essence of their messages.
“A Perfect Day” deals with what family members do to move on when a loved one turns up missing and eventually declared dead. It’s an issue many Lebanese have had to face as the fate of thousands of people remains unknown in that nation years after it was wracked by civil war.
Review caught up recently with Joana Hadjithomas in Paris, and she discussed the current film as well as the current state of Arab cinema.
“It’s gotten good reviews in the press,” Hadjithomas told Review. “In general, the film was well received by French audiences even though the subject examines a specific Lebanese situation. It was shot entirely in Arabic, without any well-known star of the Arab or Western movie world, yet it succeeded in reaching and interesting juries and Western audiences. They could identify with the film’s story.”
She can identify with the story herself, as her uncle was on of those who disappeared.
“The film is not an autobiography,” Hadjithomas said. “In the film, the decision to declare the father as dead is already made by the son (Malek, played by Ziad Saad) but not by the mother (Claudia, played by Julia Kassar). The mother, agreed to take this step without being convinced. Through this story, we wanted to show that this character does not form part of a past, since we speak about disappearance and not about death.”
She said their subject matter has drawn criticism.
“It’s astonishing to hear some people say to us, ‘you always speak about war.’ But it is difficult in the current situation not to speak about the war in Lebanon. All of it is so closely related to our past,” she said. “This war is always present, we live it by its ramifications. When we speak about those who disappeared; this situation is inevitably related to the former situation.”
The link is all too real.
“There are 17,000 people missing, and no one speaks about them or the families still waiting to know their fates,” Hadjithomas said. “The void gives us the feeling we were asleep and that something might reappear; meanwhile, we continue to live as if nothing has happened.”
The puzzling consequences of the bloody past and the uncertain present are topics the filmmakers plan to explore further.
“We want to talk about the difficulty in living today in Beirut,” she said. How can we live there? How can we manage to build ourselves in such a situation? Many problems remain to be approached and to be solved. Our society continues to move at a dizzying speed, and yet it is paralyzed. We live in an bustling society, but we don’t build anything really worthwhile. We are in a situation of non-war, but we cannot say that we are in a state of peace.”
Perhaps the current film also examines the resilience of the Lebanese.
“Lebanese people keep up a busy pace. They wonder where to spend the evening, which restaurant to choose or which show to see,” she said. “In the film, the son epitomizes this desire and way of life — a man who lives, is in love, is searching for the meaning of his life and asking himself all the questions a young man can ask about his future and how to live without the past and be able to build something again. How to awaken and take our lives in hand.”
Loss is a universal theme even beyond the war zones; earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis have buried or swept away thousands, and for many of them there is never an accounting.
“Indeed, these cases can happen anywhere in the world,” Hadjithomas said. “We sometimes imagine such situations for ourselves. Sometimes we view ourselves as living a different life or disappearing to reinvent ourselves. It’s one way to be free. All of us have dreamed about such situations, but the film does not relate to a dream; quite the opposite, it is the case of a painful disappearance.” Even the pace of the film is used as creative tool by the storytellers
“For example, in the rhythm of mourning, which is abnormal, it is necessary to lose hope and decide to mourn,” Hadjithomas said. “This rhythm is different for the two characters. There is the rhythm to the process, and the film’s hero refuses to admit it. We also tried to show how society obliges you to live life faster — you should turn the page quickly and forget quickly. Life becomes codified; a person goes away or disappears and should be replaced quickly. Everything becomes fast.”
“A Perfect Day” already has been shown in Dubai and Muscat, winning awards in the Middle East. This month, the film is expected play Damascus and Beirut.
“The Arab world is important for our films,” Hadjithomas said. “Our message looks for an opening — an aesthetic and political alternative. Certainly we are speaking about Beirut, but this situation could happen anywhere in the Arab world.”
She said the creative scene in the Arab world is heating up.
“Our contacts in the Arabic world are very broad, and we can can see the arts advancing with big strides. It’s time for us to understand that as our Arab world evolves, we shouldn’t just concentrate on its negative aspects. To the contrary, we need to show contemporary and positive things that happen in this part of the world.”
