Beirut, July 2006. The Israeli bombings strike the city. While Beirut is still on fire, the filmmaker starts a journey across his natal land. The film is not a documentary - although the images are burning real - but an essay. Using two complementary techniques, the 16 mm film and HDV, the artist questions the deep foundations of documentary genre. The eye of the cameras goes through a country in a state of terror, it records the immediate effects of the war when it touches the civilians.

Wael Noureddine films what we fear to face, and that has become a sensation icon through international press: death in its crudest angle. We can almost touch the victims, feel the bombings when they seize. But the artist also questions silence itself, the daily lives of the Lebanese, hiding behind their curtains. News images, curtains, shutters, darkness: everything hides life itself.

In a poignant and harsh way, the artist shows another trip that unveils what lies under these screens: how can one face a war that won’t tell its name? The trip starts for these young people with various drugs, before they roam between the ruins of their city. “Is there anybody there?” asks a man, as he lifts up the debris of their daily life. More than an escape, the trip would be here like a cry for life.

Wael Noureddine

Wael Noureddine was born in Lebanon in 1978. Wael Noureddine is a writer, journalist and poet. His films describe real situations in a literary and critical way. He graduated with special mention in cinema studies from Sorbonne. In 2005 he published together with Jean-Luc Godard, Philippe Grandrieux, FJ Ossang, Lou Castel, and Lionel Soukaz in Nicole Brenez' "cinema / politique". «Chez Nous a Beyrouth» (2001), «Ca Sera Beau -From Beirut With Love» (2005) and «July Trip» (2006); is his Trilogy about Lebanon that wants to capture the physical and mental scars of the conflicts in the Middle East, rejecting subjugation and resignation. In 2007 he his shooting his fourth film about pre-muslim god «Hubal» in Yemen.