Beirut, Lebanon
Locations: Metropolis Art Cinema, Empire Sofil, Beirut
Dates: Starting September 17, 2009
Info: www.metropolisartcinema.net
The much-anticipated Lebanese documentary “The One Man Village” will be released theatrically in Lebanon after touring the many international festivals around.
Semaan is leading a quiet life on his farm in the small village of Ain al-Halazoun in the Lebanese mountains. The hamlet was completely emptied and destroyed in combats during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Today, many years after an official reconciliation, its inhabitants, who are all from one family, regularly go back to the village to cultivate their plots of land or visit their houses and always leave before sunset. In his comforting and humorous film Simon El Habre observes the life in his quasi ghost village and tries to reflect on the collective and individual memory in a country that seems to live in a collective amnesia and is vulnerable to a new civil war.