Myriam El Hajj
Suspended - Diaries from Lebanon
Using weapons, voting booths, or revolting in the streets of Beirut. These are the choices of GEORGES, JOUMANA, and PERLA: three intersecting destinies, three generations, and the same desire to change a sick country, Lebanon. As various crises unfold, they face a dilemma: Save the world or save themselves?
DIRECTOR
Myriam El Hajj
PRODUCERS
Myriam Sassine
Carine Ruszinievski
PRODUCTION COMPANIES
Abbout Productions
Gogogo Films
COUNTRIES
Lebanon
France
GENRE
Documentary
Myriam El Hajj
MYRIAM EL HAJJ is a Lebanese filmmaker and actress. Her first documentary film, A TIME TO REST (2015), premiered at Visions du Réel-Nyon, toured in many international festivals and won several awards. She is working on her second feature documentary, SUSPENDED. She is developing a feature narrative, COMMEDIA, produced by Abbout Productions and Andolfi, for which she is having an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris. She teaches cinema at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. She is a member of several film commissions, such as the CNC (French National Cinema Center), OIF, and DFI. She is a founding member of Rawiyat-Sisters in Film, a collective of women filmmakers from the Arab world and the diaspora.
SUSPENDED finds its source in my personal history. I grew up in a family of fighters from the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). My father and all the men in my family took up arms. They came back from this war broken and impoverished. And they never found the right words to talk about it. This lack of transmission and the need to understand pushed me to make A TIME TO REST (Trêve) in 2015, a documentary in which I questioned my uncle and his friends about their involvement. If this past has constantly tormented me, it is also because it is present. The warlords never left power despite the end of the fighting in 1990. Their calamitous (mis)management has ruined the country. The 2020 port explosion is the crudest and most violent illustration of this. Civil society has been built on the fringes of this mob rule, carrying the ideals of democracy, secularism and social justice. In 2019, young Lebanese took to the streets to express their exhaustion and desire to turn the page. I was part of this October 2019 Revolution. In this context of a change of era, without being able to imagine what would happen, I felt the need to make this film, to bear witness to a change stirring in the air.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Myriam Sassine
MYRIAM SASSINE majored in audiovisual studies and received an M.A. in Cinema Research. In 2010, she joined Abbout Productions producing several features and documentaries such as COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON by Mounia Akl (Venice Film Festival Official Selection / TIFF 2021), ALL THIS VICTORY by Ahmad Ghossein (Venice Critic’s Week 2019), 1982 by Oualid Mouaness (TIFF 2019), PANOPTIC by Rana Eid (Locarno 2017) and AMAL by Mohamed Siam (IDFA 2017). From 2016 to 2020, she was the COO of Schortcut Films dedicated to co-producing international films such as FÉLICITÉ by Alain Gomis and BEAUTY AND THE DOGS by Kaouther Ben Hania. In 2016, she co-founded Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival, the only genre film festival in the Middle East and acts as the festival’s executive director. Since 2021, she’s the artistic director of Beirut Cinema Platform, Beirut DC’s co-production platform. She teaches film producing at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) and ESA Business School. She’s also a producing mentor for several institutions such as Doha Film Institute, Produire au Sud Agadir, Full Circle Lab Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Hot Docs Blue Ice Lab. She is an alumna of EAVE Producer’s Workshop (2019) and Film Independent Producing Lab (2019).
Production company profile
Abbout Productions produces feature films and documentaries with a distinctly Arab voice, expressing the identity of the region. Since 1998, the company has managed to bring together an important network of Arab and Lebanese artists, and produced award-winning films that premiered in prestigious film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Locarno, KVIFF and received international distribution. Its filmography includes Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s ‘A Perfect Day’ (2005), ‘I Want to See’ (2008) and ‘Memory Box’ (2021); Ghassan Salhab’s ‘The Last Man’ (2006) and ‘The Valley’ (2014); Vatche Boulghourjian’s ‘Tramontane’ (2016); Rana Eid's ‘Panoptic’ (2017); Mohamed Siam’s ‘Amal’ (2017); Oualid Mouaness’ ‘1982’ (2019), Ahmad Ghossein’s ‘All This Victory’ (2019); Ely Dagher's 'The Sea Ahead' (2021) and Mounia Akl's 'Costa Brava, Lebanon' (2021). The company’s main objective remains to help structure Lebanese and Arab cinema craft into a solid industry.
Where are we at?
TOTAL ESTIMATED BUDGET
333.691 €
NEEDED FOR COMPLETION
264.573 €
TERRITORIES UNAVAILABLE
None
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