For its 15th edition, the Beirut International Film Festival will return to the capital. For its past several instalments, the event has been staged just south of town, in the Abraj multiplex, in the municipality of Furn al-Shubbak.
This year BIFF’s heavy lifting will be done at the multiplex of ABC Ashrafieh, with prestige events like opening and closing ceremonies held at the French Institute, on Damascus Road.
The event will have a G-rated start on Oct. 7 with the animated feature “The Little Prince,” Mark Osborne’s 2015 adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s much-loved novel “Le petit prince,” in which a pilot, forced to land in the North African desert, encounters a little boy from another world.
The film premiered at Cannes and has been made in English and French-language versions. The production attracted a notable array of A-list talent to voice the characters – Jeff Bridges, Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams and Benecio Del Toro all being audible in the Anglo version.
The festival closes on Oct. 15 with another crowd-pleaser: “He Named Me Malala,” Davis Guggenheim’s slick documentary profile of Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Nobel Prize laureate who defied the Pakistani Taliban and lived to become a compelling advocate for women’s education.
Sandwiched between these two feel-good movies, the public will have an opportunity to catch 78 feature-length and short films, fictions and docs, by directors from 28 countries.
As has been the case recently, BIFF will not hold a competition for feature-length fiction films from the region. Documentary and shorts competitions have been retained, with several of the contending titles having taken prizes at other festivals.
Five docs from the Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish-speaking regions will compete for Best Film and Best Director trophies.
Students of Lebanese film will be interested in “Wheels of War,” the latest by Rami Kodeih, which profiles four men, once militia adversaries during the Lebanese Civil War, who are nowadays unified by their shared passion for motorcycles.
The shorts competition will field 14 works from around the region, all vying for four prizes – first, second and third-place awards and a jury prize. The contest will give viewers a chance to see “Free Range,” the latest by “Shankaboot” writer (and celebrity DJ) Bassem Breche.
A pair of noncompetitive programs will complement BIFF’s two competitions. The Public Square is comprised of 37 issue-based works – addressing the human cost of war and displacement, for instance, religious extremism and ill-treated minority communities. Regional voices are well-represented in The Public Square, which highlights work from Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and the Gulf. Series of shorts from Libya and Pakistan will also be screened.
Some people go to the cinema to escape issue-based cultural production, it seems, and BIFF 15 includes a 26-film Panorama of festival-lauded features that promise to entertain and perplex cinema-goers wanting to forget the world for a spell.
Several of these works premiered at Cannes this past spring, whose selection was relatively engaged with contemporary issues.
A case in point is Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or-winning “Dheepan,” which tells the story of three Sri Lankan nationals – a former soldier, a young woman and a little girl – who pose as a family to escape the turmoil in their country.
One of the more entertainingly confusing works to emerge at Cannes this year was Yorgos Lanthimos’ Jury Prize-winning “The Lobster,” a love story set in a dystopian near future in which singles (played by A-listers like Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz) are arrested and transferred to a hotel where they are obliged to find a mate within 45 days – or else be transformed into beasts.
Writer-director Kurosawa Kiyochi’s “Journey to the Shore” recounts the story of Mizuki, whose husband died at sea. Three years after he disappeared, he inexplicably returns, and takes his wife on a journey. Kiyochi’s film took the prize for Best Director in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.
Other Cannes alums at BIFF include José Luis Rugeles Gracia’s “Alias Maria,” Alice Winocour’s “Disorder,” Brillante Mendoza’s “Taklub,” Ciro Guerra’s “Embrace of the Serpent” and Neeraj Ghaywan’s “Masaan,” which won Un Certain Regard’s FIPRESCI and Avenir prizes.
Pop culture vultures and film buffs alike have likely heard about “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s 2015 study of celebrity packaged as a profile of the tragic rise and fall of jazz performer Amy Winehouse.
Those interested in keeping tabs on what the filmmakers in Lebanon’s expat community are up to these days could do worse than spend some time with “Wasp,” the feature film premiere of Philippe Audi-Dor. In it, Olivier and James escape the U.K. for a romantic adventure in Provence, but tension grows when Olivier finds himself increasingly intrigued by a woman named Caroline.
By Jim Quilty
For more information on Beirut International Film Festival, see beirutfilmfestival.org
