Origins, by the world-renowned writer Amin Maalouf, is a sprawling, hemisphere-spanning, intergenerational saga. Set during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth—in the mountains of Lebanon and in Havana, Cuba—Origins recounts the family history of the generation of Maalouf's paternal grandfather, Boutros Maalouf.

Maalouf sets out to discover the truth about why Boutros, a poet and educator in Lebanon, traveled across the globe to rescue his younger brother, Gabrayel, who had settled in Havana. What follows is the gripping excavation of a family's hidden past. Maalouf is an energetic and amiable narrator, illuminating the more obscure corners of late Ottoman nationalism, the psychology of Lebanese sectarianism, and the dynamics of family quarrels. He moves with great agility across time and space, and across genres of writing. But he never loses track of his story's central thread: his quest to lift the shadow of legend from his family's past.

Origins is at once a gripping family chronicle and a timely consideration of Lebanese culture and politics.

En ces premières années du XXIe siècle, le monde présente de nombreux signes de dérèglement. Dérèglement intellectuel, caractérisé par un déchaînement des affirmations identitaires qui rend difficiles toute coexistence harmo­nieuse et tout véritable débat. Dérèglement économique et financier, qui entraîne la planète entière dans une zone de turbulences aux conséquences imprévisibles, et qui est lui-même le symptôme d'une perturbation de notre système de valeurs. Dérèglement climatique, qui résulte d'une longue pratique de l'irresponsabilité...
L'humanité aurait-elle atteint son «seuil d'incompétence morale» ?
Dans cet essai ample, l'auteur cherche à comprendre comment on en est arrivé là et comment on pourrait s'en sortir. Pour lui, le dérèglement du monde tient moins à une «guerre des civilisations» qu'à l'épuisement simultané de toutes nos civilisations, et notamment des deux ensembles culturels dont il se réclame lui-même, à savoir l'Occident et le Monde arabe. Le premier, peu fidèle à ses propres valeurs ; le second, enfermé dans une impasse historique.
Un diagnostic inquiétant, mais qui débouche sur une note d'espoir : la période tumultueuse où nous entrons pourrait nous amener à élaborer une vision enfin adulte de nos appartenances, de nos croyances, de nos différences, et du destin de la planète qui nous est commune.

Today Lebanon is one of the world's most divided countries. But paradoxically the faction-ridden Lebanese, both Christians and Muslims, have never shown a keener consciousness of common identity. How can this be? In the light of modern scholarship, Salibi examines the historical myths on which his country's warring communities have based their conflicting visions of the Lebanese nation. He shows that Lebanon cannot afford this divisiveness, that in order to develop and maintain a sense of political unity, it is necesary to distinuish fact from fiction and then build on what is real in the common experience of both groups. Salibi offers a major reinterpretation of Lebanese history and provides remarkable insights into the dynamic of Lebanon's recent conflict.

故事环绕捕杀伊迈德·穆格尼耶的行动。穆格尼耶被指为1980至90年代发生的两宗美国驻贝鲁特大使馆爆炸案的主谋，后在2008年2月12日在大马士革被汽车炸弹暗杀。

Winner of the 2020 Prix Femina Special Jury Prize, this is the diary of one of Lebanon's best-selling authors in the year of the explosion that stunned the world.

双胞胎姐弟珍妮（梅丽莎·德索蒙斯-波林 Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin饰）跟西蒙（马克西姆·高德特 Maxim Gaudette饰）收到过世的母亲娜瓦尔（卢布娜·阿扎宝 Lubna Azabal饰）的遗嘱，可当宣读完内容之后，两姐弟却一时难以接受这样的遗嘱：一份是写给他们从未蒙面的父亲；一份是写给她的第三个孩子——他们更是不知道这个哥哥的存在。影片巧妙的游走在两个不同的时空：母亲终其一生苦苦寻觅自己的长子；姐弟遵循母亲的遗嘱前往中东寻找他们的父亲与兄长。可越是穷其究竟，他们面对的越是理不清的头绪跟令人震惊的真相。
本片改编自加拿大著名法语作家瓦基迪·穆阿瓦德的同名剧作。导演丹尼斯·维伦纽瓦荣获第83届奥斯卡金像奖最佳外语片提名。

Three men. 470 kilometres. Twenty-one days.

Welcome to the Downhill Hiking Club . . .

At a boozy, cricket-filled afternoon at Lord's, Dom Joly convinces his two closest friends to agree to the unthinkable: a challenging hike across Lebanon, from the Israeli border in the south, along the spine of the country's mountain range, all the way to the Syrian border in the north. For Joly it is something of a homecoming, having grown up in Beirut. It was a happy childhood, though he did go to school with Osama bin Laden.

Arriving in Lebanon armed with copious amounts of Vaseline - and no walking experience, bar taking the dog for the occasional stroll - Dom, Chris and Harry don't quite know what they've got themselves into. Joined by their bemused chaperone Caroll, they meet a variety of characters along the way including Ali, a stony-faced Hezbollah Museum guide who seems unperturbed by circling Israeli jets, and part-time Londoner Raf, who challenges Dom and the boys to a brain-freeze drinking contest. From a hair-raising creep along the 'Valley of the Skulls' to accidentally flashing an unsuspecting Ethiopian cook, the three friends just about manage to keep going.

With more than a smattering of persiflage and some cringe-worthy moments, The Downhill Hiking Club is a big-hearted, witty and affectionate love letter to Lebanon and its rich history with a meditation on family and homeland at its heart. Written with Dom's trademark humour, it is a paean to both the simple joys of friendship and to growing old disgracefully.

This Book Highlights Israel’s Northern Borders—Crucial to the Nation’s Survival—Where Israel’s Soul Thrives Amid Persistent Danger, Isolation, and Economic Tribulation.
By combining intimate profiles of residents in multiple border communities with thorough research, you will meet daring people who settled the region, overcame its hardships, and remain determined to live normal lives in a challenging land.
Written by a member of the International Advisory Board for Alma, a Northern Israel Research and Education Center, this fascinating narrative reveals the century-plus story of the return of a Jewish presence to Israel’s northern borders where a Jewish nation once flourished.
“Living in Heaven, Coping with Hell is a meticulously researched, deeply reported and compellingly written account of the unique challenges and remarkable resilience of the Jewish communities along Israel’s often precarious northern borders.” -David Leach, author of Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel.
Those intrepid souls that settled the land and hold it today will stir you, and humor you, as you encounter ordinary men and women that accomplished extraordinary things. You will learn of:
Idealistic and courageous Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Zionists building a nation.
The Kibbutz–its rise, fall, and struggle to rise again.
Hezbollah, terrorism, and Katyushas.
Why Israelis remain determined to live along Israel’s northern borders.
Inspiring stories of people who now populate the region.
Communities along the border you will want to explore when you visit Israel.

Traffic rushes by as if nothing has happened. But beside the road, the rubble is smoldering, and firefighting helicopters are circling overhead. Ten minutes in, this is the first specific image we see of the devastating explosion that took place on 4 August 2020 at the Port of Beirut. Until this point, its presence in the film has been indirect—a man smoking beside a broken window, the distant sounds of ships’ horns and sirens.
Octopus is a thoughtful testimony to the aftermath of the explosion. First there is the stillness. Tightly framed shots show residents staring silently in houses with shattered windows. Shots of empty streets, with crumbling walls and cars dented by the shockwave, form an elegy accompanied by an ambient score.
In the second half, stillness cautiously makes way for a new beginning. Playing children fill the streets, and there are sounds of reconstruction; the city starts to regenerate and human resilience emerges.

Lebanese artist-filmmaker Zaatari conducts both an investigation and a stirring tribute to an act of resistance (or forbearance) that marked his childhood memories: the refusal of an Israeli pilot to bomb a boys' high school in south Lebanon in 1982.

On Three Posters is gebaseerd op found footage van videobrieven opgenomen door leden van de Libanese Communistische Partij, voorafgaand aan het uitvoeren van hun zelfmoordmissies.
Kort voor zijn dood in 1985 oefende Jamal Salti, die tegen de Israëlische bezetting van Zuid-Libanon (1982-2000) streed, zijn videogetuigenis in drie takes die maar minimaal van elkaar verschillen. Dit materiaal vormt het vertrekpunt voor gedachten over het spanningsveld tussen fundamenteel menselijke trekken en de heroïsche verbeelding van martelaarschap.
Rabih Mroué’s analyse spitst zich toe op een moment van aarzeling in een van de ongebruikte opnamen. Ook doet hij uit de doeken hoe, sinds de eerste presentatie van dit werk (als Three Posters samen met Elias Khoury in het jaar 2000), de ontvangst ervan is veranderd in de context van het geopolitieke landschap van na 11 september.

“Syriërs filmen hun eigen dood”, zo begint The Pixelated Revolution, een studie van het gebruik van mobiele telefoons tijdens de demonstraties in de eerste maanden van de revolutie in Syrië. Rabih Mroué plaatst een selectie van gevonden videomateriaal van botsingen en confrontaties, door opstandelingen gefilmd en op het internet gezet, in een nieuw kader en een nieuwe context om de breekbaarheid van het menselijk lichaam en populaire technologie in de werkelijkheid van een oorlog uit te lichten.
Zijn lezing is een bespiegeling over hoe Syriërs hun beelden “nu en hier” vastleggen, over de relatie tussen deze daad van fotografische documentatie en de dood, en over hoe wij die video’s als “nu, maar daar” bekijken.

It’s October 2019, and four progressive women are documenting the uprising in Beirut. They are journalist Hanine, Iraqi camerawoman Lujain, and Noel and Michelle, two artist sisters whose often-ironic songs have made them a voice for their generation. The prevailing mood is one of hope and change. But a few months later, Covid-19 has locked down the city, and all optimism seems to have evaporated.
This non-chronological account of a tumultuous period in recent Lebanese history loops back and forth between uprising and lockdown, with the four women calling each other and the film’s director Mai Masri on video. They express their opinions about current events and place them into historical perspective, but also offer glimpses into their personal lives.
The devastating blow of the explosion at the Port of Beirut, just ten months after the uprising, was still to come. Will the young women be able to hold onto their dream of a new Lebanon?

The story of Lebanon is one of ongoing tragedy. A march of follies orchestrated by heads of state, sects, and militias. The Palestinians, French, British, Iranians, Syrians, Americans, Israelis and the Lebanese themselves, have all, at one point or another, contributed to the country's tragic history. Caught up in the chaos were the Lebanese themselves - made up of different sects, religions, and ethnicities - writing their own history in a string of political assassinations, massacres, and betrayals.

When director Philippe Aractingi is forced to leave his motherland for the third time, the realisation dawns on him: his ancestors have been fleeing wars for five generations. Exploring his roots, Aractingi goes back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of Israel and the Lebanese Civil War. Experimenting with a radical new film-making style, he interlaces directed scenes and archive images with video-filmed personal diaries, family photos and super 8 reels. Written by Dubai International Film Festival