Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous

Genre: Social problem film
Director: Wissam Charaf
Country: France, Italy, Lebanon, Qatar
Year of production: 2022
Czas: 83 min

Awards and nominations:
2023 Palm Springs International Film Festival: Bridging the Borders Award
2022 Venice Film Festival: Europa Cinemas Label Award
2022 Hamburg Film Festival: Critics Award: Special Mention
2022 Entrevues Film Festival: Audience Award

Ahmed is a Syrian refugee. He spends his days roaming Beirut streets as a vanguard of a lorry collecting scrap metal. With his monotonous voice he announces that residents can give away unwanted “iron, copper, batteries”. The money he earns is not enough for him to find a stable place to live. Mehdia has come to Lebanon from Ethiopia and works as an elderly military man’s housemaid. The man suffers from dementia, which doesn’t stop the girl from liking him. At one point, however, his broken synapses convince him he’s a vampire who must find
himself a victim. Both Ahmed and Mehdia are second-class citizens. He faces hostility towards Syrians and is either picked on while walking on the street or denied entry to a job centre.
He’s discriminated against by the system which makes Syrian refugees the only ones subject to curfew. Mehdia’s passport has been confiscated by a migrant smuggler. She’s left with no
illusion that she’s something more than a contemporary slave. One more thing: inferior people don’t have the right to love. The only thing they can get is an illicit sexual encounter in the
backstreet.
Director Wissam Chara is a keen observer of subsequent circles of hell: intolerance, lack of perspectives, and exclusion. He manages to escape sombre realism, though. His film resembles
a modern fairy tale, cruel but not deprived of humour. Mehdia and Ahmed just want to work, love, and live a normal life. In their silence they are similar to Aki Kaurismaki’s characters. But there’s one difference: it’s easier to rekindle hope and remnants of solidarity in Europe hit by crises than in the Middle East which deals with a difficult past. All Chara finds in the latter is a sea of sorrow. And one pure feeling.

Author: Krzysztof Kwiatkowski

Wissam Charaf – a Lebanese-French director, screenwriter and journalist working for the TV channel ARTE. In his work he portrays divisions and mentality of present-day Lebanon. “Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous” was awarded at multiple film festivals, including Venice Film Festival.

2023-04-16

11:00

2023-04-22

19:00