18th Arab Film Festival

Friday, September 27 at 9:15pm

The screening of Anxious in Beirut (93 min) is preceded by The Diary of a Sky (44 min).

ABOUT Anxious in Beirut

Dir. Zakaria Jaber • Lebanon, Jordan, Qatar, Spain • 2023 • 93 min • Documentary • Arabic
In the ever-present desire to capture, record, and understand Beirut––and by extension himself–– Zakaria Jaber has been trying to provide a coherent story for his city through film. Anxious in Beirut is a personal diary that documents the events of the last few years in Lebanon, capturing revolution, collapse conditions, explosions, and demonstrations. Living with constant anxiety, Zakaria, the film’s young director, narrates his own life and the lives of those close to him as they navigate a worsening economic and political situation in Lebanon. Frustrated, he and his friends also consider leaving their country, a decision that each struggles to make.

FILMMAKER BIO

Zakaria Jaber is a self-taught film director, editor, and writer. His practice is based on many experiences in the fields of journalism, filmmaking, and video editing. In 2018, he produced and directed his first short film independently, and in 2019, he directed his first feature film, Anxious in Beirut, a culmination of three years documenting the lives of friends and family as well as economic and social issues.

ABOUT The Diary of a Sky

Dir. Lawrence Abu Hamdan • Lebanon • 2024 • 44 min • Documentary • Arabic
The Diary of a Sky unfolds an atmospheric symphony of violence over Beirut, revealing the haunting fusion of incessant Israeli military flights and the hum of generators during blackouts. This 45-minute video essay plunges viewers into a chilling chronicle of daily life transformed by the weaponization of the air, where the terror of repeated incursions becomes a disconcertingly banal backdrop.

FILMMAKER BIO

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist, filmmaker, independent investigator, and “Private Ear.” His investigations focus on sound and linguistics and have been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International and Defence for Children International together with fellow researchers from Forensic Architecture. 

PRESENTED BY MIZNA

Celebrating 25 years in 2024, Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.