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As part of the 2024 Écrans du réel program, Diaries from Lebanon, directed by Myriam El Hajj, offers a portrait of contemporary Lebanon. The film will premiere in Lebanon on Monday, January 13, at 8:00 PM at Cinéma Montaigne, Institut Français du Liban.
Produced by Abbout Productions and featured in Metropolis Art Cinema's Écrans du réel 2024 lineup, the Diaries from Lebanon documentary delves into personal stories intertwined with Lebanon's sociopolitical upheavals. Through a poignant and deeply personal exploration, the film blends individual narratives with the collective memory of a nation striving for change.
Today, this film takes on a deeply poignant dimension, reflecting the events of the past few years. It feels like diving back into the turmoil of a country that has repeatedly collapsed and risen again. The camera follows three distinct characters — Georges, Joumana and Perla Joe — who speak with hearts full of hope and eyes brimming with determination, eager to transform their city and the world around them. These three destinies converge in a shared desire to heal a broken nation: Lebanon.
How do we continue to dream when the world around us is crumbling? Through living diaries, shared moments, movements and conversations, Myriam El Hajj chronicles four tumultuous years in the life of a nation struggling to break free from its chains. Against the backdrop of national upheaval, the film reveals deeply personal quests for meaning and survival.
Myriam El Hajj is a Lebanese filmmaker whose debut feature-length documentary, A Time To Rest, premiered at Visions du Réel-Nyon in 2015, screening at numerous international festivals and earning multiple awards. Her second documentary, Diaries from Lebanon, is set to premiere in the Panorama Section of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
Diaries from Lebanon unfolds as a lyrical storytelling of a nation’s resilience, catching the pulse of a land caught between hope and shattered dreams. Its title, Diaries from Lebanon, induces the bittersweet dance of nostalgia and renewal that describes the Lebanese soul. Against the backdrop of the 2019 events and the devastating August 4 explosion, the film narrative is a mosaic of lives tangled within a nation’s battle.
Joumana, holding the flag of resilience, rises and falls against the currents of corruption; Georges, a relic of war, carries the weight of dreams, remorse and a fractured past; and Perla Joe, fierce and inflexible, incarnates the voice of a generation asking for justice, hoping for a better home. Their stories, intimate yet collective, reflect the country’s battle for survival, trying to heal and dream again.
Over the course of four years, the director’s lens became a diary of suffering and expectation, trying to catch moments where personal journeys and group suffering united into a sonata of subsistence. Through its look, Diaries from Lebanon sheds light on people who, despite boundless trials, still find the bravery to believe in tomorrow, entwining their love for a broken homeland into an inflexible will of resilience.
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