Home Sweet Home

“One day, on the phone between Beirut and Paris, my mother says to me: “Your father has serious financial difficulties, he doesn’t have a choice, he has to sell the school, the banks won’t hesitate.” I hear the loss. I waver. I’ve always been the daughter of the director of ‘La colline libanaise’ school and I can’t imagine it any other way.  I decide to go home.” (NN). Enlivened by sometimes dramatic, sometimes comical discussions, the film plunges the viewer into the family environment of the filmmaker and into the complex political situation of a country that cannot find a peaceful co-existence between its different social components. The school founded by her father, located in the south of Beirut, was the result of a secular and progressive project, aimed at the Lebanese middle classes. This district, originally made up of different ethnic and religious groups, has now become a predominantly Shi’ite area, subject to the laws and lifestyles imposed by Hezbollah. In the face of such a situation – and above all the school’s financial condition – it seems the future has already been written. 

Luciano Barisone