Around the pink house

STORY LINE

Beirut is under reconstruction. A surprising pink palace is threaten of being destroyed to be replaced by a commercial centre. This ambitious project divides the neighborhood. As the personal stories of those living in the pink house unveil, the wounds and dreams of a strange postwar period appear.

SYNOPSIS

The story of the pink house is quite strange. Built in the popular district of Matba’a, (a fictive area), it was abandoned at the beginning of the war, hit by many shells and greatly damaged. Nowadays, two families who fled their villages have settled there illegally: The Adaimi’s and the Nawfal’s.

But the war is over. The country is going through an economic boom; the old shell-poked buildings are being turned down to make way for a large reconstruction program. The arrival of Mattar, the new owner, surprises both families and arouses great curiosity. He tells them he intends to keep the façade of the house but will remodel the inside into a commercial center. He gives them ten days to move out. This event divides the district and little by little, two groups are formed and soon clash. On the one side, those who favor reconstruction and the economic boom, with all the potential benefits for the area. On the other, the two families and their friends who feel rejected, having to start all over somewhere else.

The district soon resembles a battlefield: the mechanisms of exclusion, justification and fanaticism start working. Resistance (in the form of petitions, conciliation, intimidation) and opposition (food boycott, rumors, dividing lines) develop under the indiscreet eye of the reporter Daniel’s camera.

In this setting of tensions and crazy situations, each inhabitant lives his own tragedy, often verging on the absurd or the comical. The house is the distorting mirror of a kind of reality: that of its inhabitants, of the district, of the country. Each one finds his memories or loses them when facing the ruins of the “after-war” and those of the pink house.

PRODUCTION

Al bayt al Zahr

DIRECTED BY

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

PRODUCED BY

Mille et une productions éi?? Anne-Cécile Berthomeau & Edouard Mauriat
A French, Canadian and Lebanese production

CO PRODUCER

Les Ateliers du Cinéma Québécois – Jean Dansereau

WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF

Canal + – Canal Horizons, France
Ministère Français de la Culture Agence de la Francophonie – ACCT
Ministère des Affaires étrangères – Fonds Sud, France
Infi Gamma Holding – SAL, Liban
SODEC Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles, Québec
Programme de crédit d’impôt, Québec
Programme de crédit d’impôt fédéral, Canada
Djinn House Productions, Lebanon
Lebanese Ministery of culture, Lebanon
SOURCES – an initiative of the european program MEDIA

CAST & CREW

Hanane Abboud, Fadi Abi Samra, Asma-Maria Andraos, Nabil Assaf, Tony Balaban, Issam Bou Khaled, Joseph Bou Nassar, Nicolas Daniel, Chadi el Zein, Hassan Fahrat, Zeid Hamdan, Raymond Hosni, Georges Kehdy, Maurice Maalouf, Tony Maalouf, Majdi Machmouchi, Hassan Mrad, Nicolas Mrad, Rabih Mroué, Zeina Saab de Meleiro, Mireille Safa, Ziad Said, Nagy Sourati, Gabriel Yamine

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY	Pierre David
SOUND	Ludovic Hénaullt
DECORS	Frederic Benard
ART DIRECTOR	Sophie Khayat
EDITING	Tina Baz Le Gall
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER	Djinn House Productions
MUSIC	Robert M. Lepage
TIME	92 minutes
FORMAT	35mm color 1.85 – Dolby SR
ORIGINAL LANGUAGE	Arabic (French / English subtitles)

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

All is well. Or at least that’s what everybody is led to believe in post-war Beirut. Reconstruction is booming. The war seems but a distant bracket having been permanently closed. The country’s economy and the huge rehabilitation efforts around the city’s central district appear as a miraculous cure for any remaining traces of a conflict that once existed. Amnesia prevails.
The situation is looked at from the perspective of an old house, a pink palace of times long gone, damaged during the war, shaded off as years swept by. Two refugee families have illegally taken possession of the house and have been living in it for some eleven years. The house operates as a witness to all those years, beholding so many memories.

SCREENINGS

Festival des films du Monde de Montréal, Canada
Quebec Film Festival, Canada
San Francisco Film Festival, United States
Cairo International Film Festival, Egypt
Goteborg International Film Festival, Sweden
Carthage Film Festival, Tunisia
Beirut Film Festival, Lebanon
Sao Paolo International Film Festival, Brazil
Arte Mare – Festival du Film et des Arts méditerranéen de Bastia, France
Washington DC Film Festival, United States)
Aman Festival, Jordan
Damascus International Film Festival, Syria
Human Right Watch International Film Festival London United Kingdom & New York United States
Filmfestival Cologne, Germany
Mannheim Internationale Film Festival, Germany
Kassel Dokfest, Germany
Rio de Janeiro Mosaicos do Libano, Brazil
Caracas International Film Festival, Venuzuela
Festival International Film méditerranéen Montpellier, France
Paris Cinéma, France
Gijon International Film Festival, Spain