Ashbah Bayroot (Ghassan Salhab, Libanon 1998)
117 min - Arabisk tale, engelsk tekst - Aldersgrense 12 år

«There are experiences that cannot be translated into fiction. One must then use the other, great narrative discourse – confession and testimony.» — Antonio Munoz Molina

Phantom Beirut is set in Lebanon at the end of the 1980s, as Khalil returns home after ten years of absence. A decade earlier, in the civil war, Khalil used the cover of chaos and fire during a battle to fake his death and acquire a new identity. «His ex-comrades and lover are at a loss. Their grief, slowly domesticated and shelved through years of living after his disappearance, weighs heavy again because suddenly made gratuitous by his very reappearance. What Khalil returns to is a group of men and women who did weep the loss of a friend and then ceased to do so in order to survive. Angry and confused, they feel slighted by what seems like the artful trick of a prestidigitator.» — Walid Sadek; from Collecting the Uncanny and the Labor of Missing

Deftly utilising documentary elements, its soundtrack interrupted by power outages and bombs, Ghassan Salhab’s debut feature film is a haunting exploration of the official silences and collective amnesias that stalk the lives of those who live through war.