Costa Brava, Lebanon

Original title: Costa Brava, Lebanon
Genre: Drama
Director: Mounia Akl
Country: Lebanon, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Qatar
Year of production: 2021
Czas: 106 min

Awards and nominations:
2021 Venice Film Festival: Foundation “Persona, Lavoro, Ambiente” Award for its treatment of issues related to the environment and work
2021 Toronto International Film Festival: NETPAC Award
2021 El Gouna Film Festival: FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, Green Star
2021 London Film Festival: Audience Award
2021 Seville European Film Festival: Grand Jury Award

May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you're dead. The devil or the government, same difference. And it doesn’t have to know you exist. It’s enough for it to change paradise into hell. For example, by making it a landfill site. This is a case of a family who had left littered and toxic Beirut just to see toxins and rubbish reach their new home: a father who is an activist, a mother who is a singer, grandma and two daughters, an older one and a younger one. Their Arcadia used to be an idyllic location in the mountains. They were lucky enough to spend not a full half-hour, but eight clean, ecological years there. But this is it, the workers have to do their job. However it may sound, it’s not a simple story of people confronting the system, of open meanness, of apocalypse. This is a tale of a family and there’s nothing simple about a family. Civilisation disrupts their peace also in a sense that it tempts them. It angers the father who is a harsh and repressive god. Gradually, the perversity of the plot concept becomes apparent. Questions multiply. Was this paradise really a paradise? And if it was, is it still it? Did the arrival of the intruders catalyse an already growing conflict? 

Author: Piotr Mirski
 
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Mounia Akl – a director and screenwriter born in Lebanon. She holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University. “Costa Brava, Lebanon” is her feature debut.

2023-04-15

17:30

2023-04-18

20:00