Greetings to Kamal Jumblat

Patrick Perrault, a photo-journalist covering the war in Beirut in the late 1980s, is himself caught up in the hostilities when one day he is picked up and bundled into a car at gun-point. Blind-folded, he is taken to an unknown location where he discovers that he is being taken hostage by Lebanese guerrillas.

In the aftermath of the 1967 defeat, four young Lebanese try to figure out their places in a society whose rules seem to have changed. It proved to be an extraordinary anticipation of the civil war that would engulf the country while the film was being edited.

Who would have expected Brigitte to marry a prisoner with a long sentence in the first place? In this romantic action movie, that is only the first in a long line of surprising actions by the young woman. Somehow, she manages to get hooked to the young prisoner before realizing that he'll be locked up for another three or four decades. She decides that this is much too long to wait to spend time with her sweetheart and decides to learn how to fly a helicopter. Why? So she can fly in and take him out of his prison yard, which is exactly what she does, thrilling romantics all over France and seriously upsetting the authorities. This award-winning film is based on a true incident from 1986.

Lebanon, 1975. How Talal, an affluent young man becomes a warlord ; how Soraya, the girl he leaves behind, tries to help him in abducting a businessman ; how Nabil, a press photographer deals drugs under the cover of the civil war and poses as the hero he aspires to be but is not at all...

The camera wanders through streets standing witness to a war that has destroyed a city and an entire nation. Bagdadi goes to war against the Lebanese civil war, exploring different locations and situations in a country faced with its own demise. The poetic text raises questions of life and death through contrasting images of violent death and the will to live.

A documentary about a Southern Lebanese community torn apart by war.

TV Show Details

Bagdadi visits the southernmost town of Nabatiyeh to capture the beating pulse of the Ashoura celebrations as the faithful commemorate a chapter of their collective memory. He retraces the details of a story through those that identify with it year after year, analyzing history to understand its present-day influences.

At every station, between sites filled with poetry and nostalgia for a bygone era, the poet's dashed dreams and idealized vision of her country coincide with the director's own.

Documentary film.