
Birds of September
2013 | 99 min | Documentary
A glass van with a mounted camera drives through the streets of Beirut and explores the city from behind the glass.


2013 | 99 min | Documentary
A glass van with a mounted camera drives through the streets of Beirut and explores the city from behind the glass.

2011 | 84 min | Documentary
Through eloquent descriptions of former truck drivers, El Habre presents The Lebanon of the 1960s to the present day. They were once young, thrived on adventure and had choices. In the 1960s and 70s thousands of young Lebanese men left their villages and made a new life in Beirut. Truck driving became a lifestyle, income, money, and a vibrant urban life.

2025 | 80 min | Documentary
BERLIN RHAPSODY looks at Berlin as a city of constant motion, where tradition and innovation, history and the present, noise and calm coexist in uneasy balance. Inspired by Walter Ruttmann's 1927 silent classic, the film observes the modern metropolis through images rather than dialogue, turning streets, parks and transit lines into a living portrait. The camera moves through rush-hour subway carriages, follows bicycle couriers through dense traffic and lingers in parks where people step away from ...

2011 | 91 min | Drama
In IF YOU DIE, I'LL KILL YOU, Kurdish-Iraqi director Hiner Saleem (MY SWEET PEPPER LAND), looks at the Kurdish community in Paris. Siba is played by Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson). Avdal dreams of staying in France and plans to bring his fiancée, Sibato, Paris. She’s due to arrive in the next few days. The two men strike up a friendship when unexpectedly, Avdal dies and Philippe has organize funeral arrangements for his friend. What should he do with the body?

2021 | 45 min | Documentary
Intertwining aerial photos from pre-war times, 1990s documentary footage, and current-day shots with narrations from unseen Beirut residents, this film uncovers the ignored plight of port-side neighborhoods, revealing a history marred by corruption and relentless construction. Acclaimed Lebanese director Simon El Habre's documentary delves into Beirut’s harsh reconstruction policies, spanning over four decades. It portrays the consequences of corrupt governance and arbitrary rebuilding, which have ...

2010 | 97 min | Documentary
Some people work and live at night by choice, others because fate has compelled them to do so. Still others use darkness to operate in secret. At time when most of the city is asleep, the film accompanies the night active as they go about their business and sheds light on the essence of night in today’s big cities. Director Ivette Löcker's declaration of love for the night. The film looks at the many the different angles of what it means to live and work in darkness.

2016 | 78 min | Documentary
The Kurdish Kurdwin grew up in Austria and takes a critical view of this visit "home". Filming, she tries to find out why her father is euphoric about Kurdistan. In 1991 Kurdwin Ayub fled Iraq with her family to Austria. Almost 25 years later she accompanies her father on a journey to his former home. While he contemplates a returning to live permanently in Iraq, Kurdwin and her cousins feel like strangers in their own homeland. An intimate, sometimes bizarre and sobering portrait of the generation ...

2021 | 73 min | Documentary
A thought-provoking gaze of the exploitative migration and the terrible dilemmas facing women who must choose between earning money and caring for their own children. The film drives the realities underlying the domestic work and care solutions found by Middle Eastern countries, such as Lebanon. These solutions do not address continuing gender inequalities, and all too often rest on the exploitation and even dehumanization of the women who actually provide the care of children and do all the domestic ...

1987 | 45 min | Documentary
Interviews with Palestinians living in Lebanese refugee camps, some of it shot in Sabra and Shatila before the massacre. Compiled from interviews with Palestinian refugees from the camps in Sabra, Shatila, Bourj el-Barajneh, Ain al-Hilweh and Rashidieh in Lebanon. While at the camps, Mohamad Malas asks people about their nightly dreams, which always refer to Palestine: a woman recounts her dream of winning the war; a Feda'i resistance fighter dreams of bombings and martyrdom; an old man describes ...

2015 | 25 min | Drama
Hussein, a Palestinian young man, receives a letter from the Israeli post office to appear in person to receive a package. He has to pay the sum of 20.000 $ US dollars in order to collect that package. Hussein’s curiosity to find out what the package contains drives him to sell everything he owns, despite the outright rejection of his mother, the matter that changes their lives afterwards. "Ramzi Maqdisi’s black-comedy short, “Solomon’s Stone,” could be considered a parable of present-day Jerusalem ...

2023 | 91 min | Documentary
Three women in Jordan live in isolation – not by choice, but out of fear of further violence. Their home is their refuge, but it is also a prison that separates them from the outside world. What does it mean to live a life in the shadows? How do you find strength in the midst of pain? Helin Çelik's documentary addresses a reality that often remains hidden. ANQA is an intimate exploration of the survival strategies of these women, whose stories are told not in words but in images. The camera focuses ...